this is the soundtrack of our lives
by element78
Summary: AU- Sam's a ghost who's trying to save the world one person at a time and Dean's the only one who can see him. Somehow, this becomes a lot more complicated than it sounds. Dean/Cas slash.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: First of all, this IS NOT a standard death fic. Yes, Sam dies, but he stays dead for all of four hundred words. Yes, Sam is a ghost, but he's still present and still interacting with Dean. If you have a problem with ghost!Sam, then avoid this fic, but he's is still the bitchy, touchy-feely, too-smart, huggable moose we all know and love.

Massive, massive, thirty-four-thousand word (!) fic I wrote in, like, a week, because clearly I have no life. My friend asked for something fluffy and smutty and plotty and with a lot of Sam, not just as a secondary character with the role as awesome brother, but as an intergral part of the story. So naturally, the very first thing I do is kill Sam. I fail so hard.

* * *

They lose Sammy when Dean is twelve.

Dean hates that phrase- 'lost Sammy', like he'd simply misplaced his baby brother. Like all he has to do is a mad hunt, like when his father loses his car keys, and Sam will turn up again. Like he hadn't stood in the bitter Kansas winter, eyes red and heart hollow, and watched as they lowered that lacquered black box into the ground.

It's not Dean's fault. Everyone they met that day told him that- _it's not your fault, Dean_- until Dean could recite it in his sleep, until it echoed in his ears in a thousand different voices. It was even true, in a way- it wasn't his fault, he wasn't their father, it shouldn't have been on his shoulders to look after his brother on his own, he's just a kid- but in the end, it amounts to something very simple: Sam is dead and Dean is not. That is not how it should be.

From the moment they get the news in the hospital, John never quite looks at Dean again. He seems to simply block out his oldest- his only- son's presence. They stand next to each other at the funeral but there's a gulf big as the sky between them.

The only thing John says to Dean, after that moment when he opens the door to find a somber-faced police officer on the doorstep, is, "At least your mother isn't here to see this."

John leaves Dean at Bobby Singer's house, regardless of the touch-and-go nature of his friendship with the man, regardless of Bobby's own recent wounds- he'd lost his wife not a year previous- regardless of the fact that Bobby is hardly people-friendly and definitely not kid-friendly. He doesn't look back. It's the best thing he could have done for Dean, Dean will admit, but only years later. The betrayal will fade, but the disappointment and resentment will not.

"You miss yer brother?" Bobby asks him the first night, over a dinner of Chinese takeout. Dean looks at him, solemn green eyes in a freckled face that is already showing signs of the charming handsomeness Dean will wield like a weapon for the rest of his life, and says nothing. It sounds- _it's not your fault, Dean_- like a trap.

"We'll figure it out," Bobby says after a while, and Dean picks at his sweet-and-sour chicken and pockets three fortune cookies when he thinks Bobby isn't looking.

Sam comes back to him before the week is out.

* * *

Sam grows up.

It's peculiar, because everything Dean ever finds on ghosts says that everything vaguely life-related, such as growing, stops upon death. But Sam definitely grows up, and up, until he's taller and broader across the shoulders than Dean. He's lanky for all his extra height, though, and he keeps his hair falling-in-his-eyes long and wears ratty t-shirts and flannel overshirts. He's smart, almost painfully so, and Dean chafes and burns at the general unfairness of it all, that his genius brother should die at age eight and be reduced to ghost-hood while Dean, who's good only as eye candy, lives to some ripe old age. Or not so old, perhaps, but anything over ten feels old to an eight-year-old.

He likes to read. Dean gets tired of flipping pages in no time flat, but the books Sam is interested in- mainly the occult, for the obvious reasons- aren't available as books on tape or whatever. He likes watching the Discovery and History channels, for which Dean gives him the appropriate amount of hell, but he gets used to falling asleep to a room lit by the flickering TV. He likes indie and new age music, which is where Dean draws the line. He singlehandedly gets Dean through chemistry and calculus in high school and bitches nonstop for three months when Dean laughs in his face at the merest suggestion of college.

He doesn't talk about the day he died. He doesn't talk about what happened after, where he went or anything like that. Dean doesn't think he remembers, just based on how defensive and angry he gets when Dean asks. He'll leave, sometimes, heading off to just explore the city and other things like that, but eventually, ultimately, he always ends up right back at Dean's side, as if magnetically drawn there.

Dean's the only one who can see him, and while he feels guilty as hell for it- Bobby's more a father to him than John Winchester ever was- he keeps it to himself. He can easily imagine what the psychiatrists would have to say about it.

* * *

Sam is fond of saying- with only a trace of bitterness- that life is full of surprises. Dean is inclined to agree, although he's never so tactless as to actually do so where his not-living brother can hear him. One of the biggest to date, aside from the whole ghost thing, is when Dean became a barista.

He never actually set out to become the caffeine world's Luke Skywalker, fighting the evil Starbucks Empire. He just kind of… inherited the role. He'd moved back to Kansas City at age nineteen, and a few years later had taken to stopping by this one particular coffee shop on his way in to work- job number three of the year, so far- a place that specialized in mixed coffees. Their main call to fame was alcohol-infused coffee, which Dean thought was just the most awesome thing in the history of ever. He'd stop by twice a day, sometimes more, and even hung around after hours to help the owner and come up with new mixes.

About two years after he'd discovered the place, Dean had gotten a call. The old owner had died and left him the coffee shop in his will. It had gone, the old man who said, to the one person who appreciated it most, which Sam found both totally ironic and extremely amusing, cheerfully telling Dean that for once his addictive tendencies served him well.

Dean had gone into the coffee business with great confidence, thinking that since the shop was essentially a gift, in a building he now owned, he could protect whatever measly savings he'd accrued so far and run the place for pure profit.

He had been wrong.

Dean freely admits that the shop's status as a city landmark is pretty much the only thing that kept him afloat in that dark time. On the other hand, he made friends, learned the taste of humility, found out that Sam is a giant bitchy _girl_, and gets to drink coffee and booze all day. And he gets to play mad scientist, which is something every little boy dreams of, and as Dean never really grew out of the make-things-go-boom stage, it's ideal. And if he's never really rich, he's no longer reduced to hustling pool on his nights off to make sure ends meet.

* * *

Dean is twenty-seven when Sam discovers his True Calling.

It happens entirely on accident, as these things tend to. Dean's at Wendy's eating a burger and a chocolate milkshake, which is really the only reason anyone comes to Wendy's, and Sam is sitting across the table from him watching the other people in the restaurant. Dean's never really been able to tell if Sam misses little things like eating. If he does, he's good at hiding it.

Then Sam says his name in an _oh shit_ sort of tone and Dean looks up as he slurps at his milkshake and watches as Sam watch a pair of teenage girls flounce out of the restaurant.

"What's up?" Dean asks around a French fry. Sam looks back at him, brows furrowed.

"I don't- I think they're going to die," he says, and Dean frowns.

"What, like right now?"

"Yes, like right now!" Sam shoots to his feet- standing literally in the middle of the table, right in Dean's food, and incorporeal or not that's just not cool- and makes hurry-up gestures at his brother. "Come on, Dean, just leave it!"

So Dean does, mournfully, sliding out of that stupid plastic booth that isn't designed for anyone over five-foot-five and stumbling-lunging after the two teenage girls like some sort of mentally defective pervert. Once he's outside he turns left, heading for the parking lot, only to double back when Sam bellows for him.

Beyond the Wendy's parking lot is a strip mall. The two girls are heading down a walkway between two of the stores, and behind them is a guy in a black hoodie and sunglasses- classic criminal chic. He's fiddling with something in the hoodie pocket.

Dean doesn't bother to swear. He saves his breath for running, heading after the girls and their soon-to-be killer. He reaches them just as the creep slides a crappy little revolver out of his pocket and starts to raise it; one of the girls notices and screams, and the guy opens his mouth, and Dean hits him like a linebacker.

Nine years of hanging around bars and hustling pool has taught Dean a few things. How to best win a fight, especially if you have little regard for the rules, is one of them. He uses this and his size advantage, punching the creep in the jaw and sending him reeling. The gun hits the pavement.

The girl screams again and the other one is talking on her phone- the cops, Dean hopes. Sam is jabbering rapid-fire at both of them, trying to calm them down from the sound of it, although of course they can't hear him so all he's really doing is adding to the chaos. The creep recovers quickly from the punch and lunges at Dean like the scrawny little twig has any hope of actually winning against someone who weighs more than ninety pounds. The second time Dean puts him down, he stays there.

"Oh my god," the non-panicky girl says, while the other one continues to scream. "Trevor?"

Trevor whimpers.

"You were going to-" She looks back at the gun, harmless on the pavement well beyond Trevor's reach, and goes pale. "You _jerk_!"

And she kicks him, hard, right in the balls.

A police car turns into the parking lot a few seconds later, siren wailing and lights flashing, saving poor Trevor from any more kicks- not that he doesn't deserve it, Dean thinks, and so doesn't step in when the girl kicks him a second time before going back to her friend. Dean watches the car park as close as it can get and the cop slide out, hand on his gun but not actually drawing yet, then he looks over at Sam.

Sam looks like he's just discovered sex and Christmas and chocolate all at once. He's grinning hugely and practically vibrating with excitement. "We just did that," he says, as if Dean had somehow missed it.

The calmer girl is trying to get her hyperventilating friend to settle down. Still, she smiles when she sees Dean watching them. It's a look of desperate gratefulness. If she weren't a teenager- well, there's upsides to this saving lives business, apparently.

Then the cops arrive.

Joanna Beth Harvelle is one of Dean's regulars at the shop. Her mother owns a bar called the Roadhouse and makes the best pie in the whole damn world, as far as Dean's concerned, and expressly forbid her daughter from following her father's footsteps and becoming a cop. As near as Dean can tell, that encouraged Jo's choice probably as much as her father's legacy. He's glad she's here, even though she's looking at him like he's sprouted a third eye, because it's really only starting to sink in for Dean. He feels kinda like Sam looks, and figures it will only get worse.

Then Jo goes over to the girls- which makes sense; she's petite and blond and only a handful of years older than them, of course they'll open up to her more than her partner- and leaves Dean with the other cop, a tall bald goateed guy who has always given Dean the impression that he disapproves of Dean's very existence.

Things sort of slip out of control at that point, and by the end of his short and increasingly noisy conversation with Officer Hateful, Dean isn't exactly under arrest, per se, but he does get the honor of riding to the station in the backseat with Trevor.

* * *

"Only you could get arrested for saving someone's life," Sam says scornfully. Dean doesn't bother looking back at him, he just holds up one middle finger in Sam's general direction. He wants to say _shut up, bitch_, but can't, because Officer Hateful- excuse me, Officer Henriksen- will hear him and add yet another bullshit charge to the ever-growing list.

Dean still isn't under arrest, per se, but Officer Henriksen is lobbying very hard for it.

Henriksen comes over to Dean, standing in front of him on the friendly side of the bars. He has _detective wannabe_ written all over him, and Dean kinda hates him just on principle. "So this is how they say it went: You ran out of Wendy's after the two girls and tackled a guy with a gun. You're a hero."

Dean snorts and leans against the bars, arms folded around and through the bars. He's in the drunk tank, somewhere he's been before, on account of his belligerence. He deserves this, he openly admits it. He was about two seconds from punching a police officer, after all. There's another guy in here with him, wearing what might have been a three-piece suit before he went to a strip club and got mauled by the staff- his clothes are torn and he's covered in glitter and makeup smudges.

"This how you treat heroes around here?" he drawls.

"Miss Fleming says you saved her life," Henriksen says, gesturing with his chin to indicate the smarter, kicky teen. She sees Dean looking and waggles her fingers and juts her hip out in a suggestive sort of way; Dean gives her a smile that's almost a grimace and half-waves back. Flirting with jailbait in front of an angry cop, yeah, that's a great idea.

"So why am I in here?" Dean asks, forcing himself to focus on Henriksen so Miss Fleming doesn't get any more suggestive and thus bury him that much deeper in shit.

"How exactly did you know Trevor McIntyre was intending to hurt them?" Henriksen asks. Jo wanders over and stands a few feet behind him, hands on her hips and eyebrows high as she regards Dean.

"Uh, I'm psychic," Dean says, which is honest-to-god the only thing he can think of.

The stripper mauling guy barks a laugh. Jo smirks. Sam says "Oh my god," in an I-can't-believe-I'm-related-to-you sort of way, which Dean thinks is really unfair, because if Sam thought he could do better then he damn well should have said something _before_ Dean humiliated himself in front of everyone.

"Right," Henriksen replies, looking at Dean now as if he's measuring the crazy man for his straightjacket. And finally, _finally_, like an angel descending from on high, Jo steps forward.

"Let it go, Victor," she says. "He's the harmless kind of crazy." She takes out the keys and opens the drunk tank door and Dean gratefully walks out, smiling the cheerfully obnoxious smile of a free man at Henriksen.

"You owe me," Jo tells him as she walks out of the building with him.

"I'll take it off your tab," Dean shoots back. "Can I get a ride? My car's on the other side of town."

"There's a bus stop about four blocks from here," Jo says, snide little brat that she is. "Only the bus gets there in about five minutes, so you might wanna start running."

Dean very kindly informs her of how much he hates her right now before he does exactly that.

* * *

He misses the bus, of course. After a bit of debate, he decides to walk, since it's not like he's got anywhere to be anytime soon.

He's got one of those Bluetooth earpieces for his cell phone, which he detests with every fiber of his old-school-loving being, but he puts it on now because it makes people stop looking at him funny while he's talking to Sam.

"All right," he says. "How the hell did you do that?"

"I don't know," Sam says helplessly, still giddy despite Dean's embarrassing performance in the police station. He's all but bouncing on his heels as he walks. Dean figures, after fifteen years of being able to speak to and be seen by only one person and having absolutely no effect on the world, suddenly being able to save someone's life has got to be one hell of a trip.

"Henriksen's trying to say I was in on that, Sam," Dean snaps. " 'I don't know' doesn't cut it this time."

"I just… knew, somehow, that they were in danger," Sam says with a shrug. "Don't give me that look, Dean, that's all I've got. I just felt it."

Dean scowls but he can't fight that, can't call bullshit when there is no other answer.

"All right, fine," he grumbles. "That was fun. Let's never do that again."

"Dean…" Sam begins, somehow managing to mix hope and disappointment and scolding and condescension into one simple word, and Dean throws his arms into the air with an overly dramatic _fine_ and storms off, the living epitome of maturity, and tries very hard not to think about what a self-centered jackass he really is.

* * *

The thing is, once Sam starts sensing people's impending demise, he _doesn't stop_. He seems to be seeking these people out, in fact, and making his very best bitchface at Dean until he caves and tells them their life is in imminent danger.

Dean's already got a semi-reputation around town, mostly based on his sex life and his drinking and antics therein. This new tendency of his of turning up right when things are about to hit, or are in the process of hitting, the fan gets him firmly pigeonholed in a whole different category. To those few he's helped, he's a saint. To the rest of the town, he's a lunatic.

To one or two, like Henriksen, he's a Moriarty-level criminal mastermind, engineering a string of muggings and petty disputes and natural accidents in order to prevent them so as to make himself appear a hero.

He gets arrested twice and hauled into the station on suspicion of general evilness about five times before he gets tired of it and puts serious effort into learning how to slip away before the cops show up. Most of that is on Sam, who has to learn to keep his distance during a fight- Dean can't help but instinctively think of Sam as a living person who can help and can get hurt, and tends to react accordingly when it starts getting violent- so as to not distract his brother. He keeps an eye out for cops and warns Dean when it's time to go. They perfect their routine, smooth as silk, and thus Dean gets a sort of secondary career as Batman without the cape.

It's simultaneously the coolest and most embarrassing thing Dean has ever done. But his opinion of it isn't important. Saving lives is all well and good, but make no mistake- he does this for Sam.

For the first time in his non-life, Sam is _doing something_. He's ridiculously happy, and it shows. Whatever his great grand can't-tell-Dean afterlife mission is, it's not fulfilling enough for him. But now he's saving lives. He's making a difference, however indirectly. And that's good enough for Dean, good enough that he keeps doing it even though he's fairly sure one of these times he's going to get shot or stabbed or- possibly worse- won't walk out of jail after only a few hours of hassle.

But Sam is truly happy is for the first time in fifteen years, and that's all Dean needs. So he carries on for four years, saving lives and brewing coffee and bitching at his brother and avoiding all the cops who aren't Jo, and even Jo sometimes on the really bad days. And that's what life is, for four years.

And then there was Cas.

* * *

The first thing that registers with Dean about the new cop in town is eyes blue as sin, framed with thick dark lashes, big and oddly vulnerable. The second thing is a voice that brings to mind things like gravel and broken glass and cheap whiskey and cigarettes and marathon sex; he could be reciting the periodic table, for all Dean cares, just so long as he keeps talking, because each word in that beautiful wreck of a voice slides under Dean's skin to pool like liquid heat low in his stomach. The third thing that registers, after a bit of a delay, is what the man is saying- namely, he's informing Dean of his Miranda rights, because he's arresting Dean.

It's not the best first impression Dean could have left him with.

"What'm I arrested for?" he asks Sam in the car a few minutes later, while the cop circles around to the driver's door. Sam, sitting in the backseat with him in some attempt at solidarity, pulls a bitchface and folds his arms over his chest.

"Drunk and disorderly," he says, and he's brewing for a lecture when the cop opens the door and Dean's eyes snap over to him like they're magnetically locked.

And Sam goes, "Oh, _oh_," like he suddenly gets it. Dean tosses him a scowl and sinks low into his seat and tries not to sulk, because _of course_ it's the new cop on the force who doesn't have Dean Winchester, Nut Job marked firmly on his internal register, who arrests him tonight. Not Henriksen or Jo or any one of the other cops he's met and/or been arrested by, but the hot new guy.

So Dean gets a free ride and overnight stay in the police station, stuck with stinky-face Sam and a guy who probably knew Dean's reputation as Public Menace # 1 before he knew what Dean looked like. On the other hand, it's not like the guy's opinion of him can sink any further. There's nowhere to go from here but up.

* * *

Sam does his research- read: spies- on the new guy and reports to Dean the following morning.

"He's a detective, just promoted," he says as Dean sips at his coffee and digs through the newspaper. Thanksgiving is next week, and all the papers are already loaded down with sleek glossy ads for Black Friday shopping. "There's a lot of talk about family connections and favoritism and all that. Apparently he's related to the mayor or something." He shrugs helplessly. There's only so much you can learn from conversations you aren't actively participating in.

Then Sam adds, "He's kinda hot, right?" and Dean knows his brother is, however heavy-handedly, trying to play him. Even though he has the ultimate blank pass to all sorts of deviant, voyeuristic behavior, Sam is a prude, and what little interest he's shown in people, it's always been in the female sort of people. He doesn't think Castiel is hot, but he knows Dean does.

"Yeah," Dean scoffs. "Maybe I should ask him out." He waggles his eyebrows at Sam as he swallows the last of his coffee. Sam- bad, _bad_ Sam- actually looks thoughtful.

"Why not?" he asks.

"The guy arrested me, Sam," Dean snaps, dumping the mug in the sink. "Not even forty-eight hours ago. Not exactly the best start. 'Hey, it's me, Dean, y'know, the drunk from the other night?'"

"Well, at least you know he'll remember you," Sam says philosophically. Dean throws the dish towel at him.

"I'm not some creepy stalker," he says defensively, because he really kinda is.

"Right," his brother scoffs, thus proving that he actually can read Dean's mind. "That's why you've got a ghost stalking him instead."

Dean heads into the bathroom to escape the conversation and slams the door shut behind him.

* * *

Two days later Dean is locking the shop door when Sam says his name. He looks up and there's Detective Castiel Milton himself, in the flesh, hands in his pockets and nose and ears tipped with red. Dean feels colder just looking at him.

"Hi," he says, instead of asking why the hell the idiot's wandering around in that trench coat instead of a real coat.

"I want to know how you know," the detective says without preamble. Dean blinks at him.

"How I know…?" he begins. He can't help but stare at the other man's lips, especially when Castiel lets his breath out in a rush, the warm air crystallizing in the winter cold instantly.

"In the past four years, you have interrupted and prevented seven murders," Castiel says. "Possibly more. I want to know how you know."

Sam is standing next to the cop, giving Dean a big grin and a thumbs up. Dean ignores him.

"Sure, all right," he says with a shrug, and unlocks the door. "C'mon in, no use freezing outside."

If this were a chick flick, Castiel would take off his suit jacket and his coat and roll up his sleeves and sit a little too close, and one thing would lead to another and this would end in happy fun sexytimes for both of them. Dean likes that sort of chick flick moments. Instead, the cop keeps his coat on and sits at the table across from Dean. He's stiff and awkward and quiet, his stare a penetrating blue laser, and it's a little creepy. Says the guy who lives with the ghost of his twenty-year-dead brother.

"You are not psychic," Castiel says as Dean passes him his coffee. He takes one polite, perfunctory sip before he sets it aside. Dean tries not to be insulted.

Sam is gone, giving Dean privacy in which to operate. Dean misses him, somewhat, because he knows he's going to need the backup. He's also desperately grateful Sam is gone, since he probably doesn't want an audience for this.

"Yeah, no, that was just sometime I said to… to… piss off Henriksen." Dean huffs a laugh, feeling about as awkward as he could possibly be, trying to straddle the fine line between almost-truth and not looking like a total basketcase for the nice detective. He spoons sugar into his coffee, which he normally considers almost blasphemy, for something to do with his hands.

"It's just, I get these bad feelings, and sometimes I get lucky," he says, sucking on the spoon and trying not to squirm as Castiel's eyes go narrow- indication of a fine bullshit detector. All that intense focus is overwhelming in the best way possible, like Dean is the only thing Castiel is thinking about, like looking at Dean and talking to him is the only thing in the world for him right now. Dean maybe takes a minute to daydream about how totally awesome such complete focus would be during sex.

Then he forces his mind off that track, because Castiel is looking at him like a cop looks at an uncooperative suspect. And he is a cop; Dean can't let himself forget that, no matter the pretty. Castiel is in the perfect position to declare Dean a psychotic and dangerous to himself and-or others and have him committed in some mental hospital somewhere.

Castiel looks at him for a few moments longer, far beyond the social norm for staring. Then he stands up and reaches into his pocket, places a card and money for the coffee he barely touched on the table.

"If you get another _bad feeling_," he says, and Dean hadn't known it was possible to pack so much scorn and disbelief into such a level tone, "call me. Preferably before you do something stupid."

Dean watches him leave and drinks his coffee. After a long minute he picks up the card and stares at Castiel's name and number and thinks.

* * *

"My brother died when I was a kid," Dean says, three days later, as he picks his way carefully along the icy sidewalk. He immediately wants to kick himself- he has no idea why he said that, except maybe because the awkward silence is finally starting to screw with his head. Castiel walks next to him, single-minded focus locked on the woman a hundred yards or so ahead of them. He's still wearing only that stupid trench coat, but he isn't shivering. Dean kind of wants to poke him and make sure he's actually human and this isn't another ghost thing.

Most people, when hearing something like that, apologize and stage a strategic verbal retreat. Not Castiel. "What happened?"

Dean hesitates, feeling oddly resentful towards the other man for a moment. It's not his fault; Dean had brought it up, voluntarily and with no prompting, and even after only a few meetings Dean knows him well enough to know not to expect the socially accepted response from this guy. Castiel says what he's thinking, and damn the consequences. It's oddly endearing.

"Murdered," Dean says gruffly, hunching his shoulders up. "I was supposed to be watching him," he adds, and can't seem to find any words after that. Castiel looks at him- _it's not your fault, Dean_- but doesn't say the hated words. There's no sympathy or pity or understanding there, just acceptance.

Castiel says, "My sister died in a car accident when I was nine," and Dean somehow knows that Castiel just _gets it_. He doesn't know how, or even what there is to get, but Castiel gets it.

Then Sam, who's been following the woman up ahead, closer than Dean and Castiel could get, suddenly bellows, "Dean!"

Dean doesn't even bother looking. He just breaks into a run, charging towards the woman who is about to die. She's checking something on her phone and stepping out onto a road and Sam is staring hard at something off to the left that Dean can't see. He reaches her and grabs her by the fur-lined hood of her coat, hauling her backwards even as he throws himself desperately back. He slips in the slush in the curb and falls on his side and the woman lands on top of him, all elbows in his ribs and a knee slamming into his inner thigh, dangerously close to more vulnerable regions, and she says something very unkind directly into his ear and readies her fist to punch him-

A sedan comes thundering down the road, sliding sideways down the icy hill. Dean gets an impression of the driver- wide eyes, mouth an 'o' of horror and shock- before it's past, a red blur of metal and grey slush. For a long moment the entire tableau- woman, man, man, and ghost- freezes until there comes the shattering crash of a vehicle in motion fetching up against a solid unmovable object. A moment later a car alarm begins a half-hearted sort of wail.

Castiel reaches Dean a second later and kneels down beside him, just long enough to look them both over critically, checking for any obvious injuries. Then he's gone, heading down the hill, presumably to check on the driver.

"Oh my god," the girl says, still staring at the waving line of tire tracks the sedan had left in the snow on the road, thus making her officially the last one to the party. Dean twists a bit beneath her, trying to edge her knee away from his groin, and gets half-melted slush down the back of his shirt for his trouble.

"Well, you definitely impressed him," Sam says, and Dean really shouldn't feel like the nerdy guy who just got noticed by the head cheerleader, but he kinda does anyway.

"Oh my god," the girl says again. She looks down at Dean and says again, "Oh, my god!"

"You're welcome," Dean says with his best grin.

* * *

She takes him out for tacos and tequila as a thank-you-for-saving-my-life thing. Sam sits in the booth beside her and rolls his eyes and sighs loudly every time he thinks Dean's getting a little too interested in her charms. Dean ignores him.

She kisses him outside the restaurant. Dean decides he likes the feel of those soft, round breasts pressing against him, but he can live without them. He wants to see what Castiel's blue eyes look like, wide with anticipation and dark with ecstasy, wants to know what that sunlight-bright intensity feels like when it's focused on Dean's body. So Dean thanks her again for the food and gets in his car, alone, and pulls out his cell phone.

"How's the driver?" he asks without preamble.

"He's in the hospital. The doctors say he will live." Castiel says. He's silent after that, because he's never been one for carrying the burden on the conversation, and Dean tries to figure out what to say next. The main point of this call is to tell Castiel that, even though he left with the woman, he isn't with her still. She's gone. It's too much to hope Castiel will figure that out on his own, though, or that he'll even care.

"You're not gonna ask how again?" he says. Castiel sighs.

"Would you tell me if I did?" he counters.

"Probably not," Dean admits with a smirk. He looks out the Impala's heat-fogged windows. "Are you busy?"

"Not at this moment. Why?"

He holds out his hand, looks at it carefully. He'd only had a little bit to drink, barely enough to hit tipsy, but he remembers that car sliding past and can see his hand shaking.

"I kinda need a ride," he says. Next to him Sam snorts and shakes his head and says something that sounds like _real smooth, Dean_. Dean sticks his tongue out at him.

A few minutes later, the same standard-issue unmarked sedan he'd been loaded into the night he and Castiel met pulls into the spot beside the Impala, and Dean can't help but smile.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Meant to post this last night, but I was tired, so I went to bed instead. I know, how very selfish of me.

This chapter is where the M rating takes effect, children, so be forewarned.

* * *

After the first time, it kind of becomes their thing.

Castiel slides into Dean's life as easily as if he's always been there, a silent trench-coat-wearing sentinel. Dean gets into calling him Cas, which earns him a confused blink the first few times, but it feels so right in Dean's mouth he soon enough forgets that there was ever more to his name than those three letters.

He calls Cas whenever Sam gets his ghost spidey sense. Sometimes Cas- overworked and underpaid, like any civil servant- can drop everything to come help, but most times he can't. He's always there soon enough, however, and Dean is desperately grateful to have a cop on his side, one who doesn't ask questions and keeps the others from getting too suspicious.

Cas drinks tea, not coffee, which Dean knows isn't meant as a personal affront but still kind of feels like one. He hangs out at the shop because the tables are big enough for him to spread out his files and pictures to work, and because he can trust Dean to warn people off from his stuff with a glare if he happens to go to the bathroom or something. If his extracurricular Save the World project with Dean has any impact on his life- social, professional, or otherwise- he never says, although he always looks run down and worn out and stressed, however much or little Sam's ghost-senses have been active the past few days.

Dean flirts with him, of course. Dean flirts with everyone. Dean likes sex and knows other people do as well, and some are a little freer with it than others, and his charming smile and a little harmless banter is the fastest way to determine those people. Sometimes, when Dean is being really obvious, Cas will do something that can almost be interpreted as flirting back, but it's a quicksilver mood, there and gone again. For the most part, all Dean gets is Sam smirking and rolling his eyes, like he doesn't know whether to pity or laugh at his brother, and is perfectly willing to do both at the same time.

* * *

Dean's birthday is on a Wednesday. He doesn't do a big celebration, never really has, but somehow his closest friends- a surprisingly small group, when you see it, since for all Dean's friendly outgoing nature he's not really the making-friends type- and his most loyal customers end up in the shop, drinking Irish coffee and wearing those stupid cone party hats and eating pie Ellen baked. There's two omissions from the crowd, two people missing that only Dean notices.

Sam, for his part, doesn't like parties. It's salt in the wound, a reminder of everything he isn't, everything he can never have. He'd smiled and nodded and said happy birthday, Dean, earlier, and pretended to have a good time for the few minutes he'd hung around, and Dean pretended not to notice when he disappeared.

The other omission is harder to pinpoint. It takes almost two hours before Dean finally figures out who's missing, and he never figures out why it matters. He hadn't told Cas it was his birthday- he hadn't wanted to put any pressure on the guy, especially after seeing the abstract terror Cas had approached Christmas with, since the poor bastard just _does not get_ the whole gift-giving thing- and hadn't expected him to be here, since social gatherings aren't his thing. But some small part of him had expected Cas to know and to show up anyway, even if it was only to hang around awkwardly for a few minutes before leaving again.

It's almost midnight when that mini-mystery is solved. Dean's busy inventing an espresso-rum-Red Bull mix shot when Sam walks through the door, looking haggard, and says "Dean," in a tone Dean can't ignore.

He finds Cas in the police station parking lot, sitting on the curb, a bottle of very expensive whiskey in one hand and one of those dinky little plastic disposable cups in the other. He's shivering for the first time since Dean met him, as if he's only just now figured out it's winter.

Dean sits down, stiff with cold, next to him. He tucks his hands into his pockets for a minute, then pulls one back out when Cas fills the cup with whiskey and offers it to him. It's good stuff. Probably not worth the price, but good stuff.

"Whatcha doing here, Cas?" he asks after he swallows the last little bit of whiskey. It spreads like slow-burning fire down his chest and through his belly and he wonders how long Cas has been out here, that he's shivering despite the alcohol and his inhuman tolerance for the cold.

"Regretting that I was not born an only child," Cas mutters petulantly, and Dean snorts, because that, he gets. He'd have said something more like _hating my brother_, but he gets it. Just because Sam's a ghost doesn't mean they haven't had some real knock-down-drag-outs before.

Dean passes the cup back over and Cas pours himself a healthy dose of whiskey. His hands are shaking, and judging by how empty the bottle is, it's not just from the cold.

"So what happened?"

"My brother is being very…" Cas pauses, that intense focus locked onto getting as much whiskey as he can into the cup without spilling a single drop. Dean wants to reach over and steady his hand, hold his wrist, but considering how much alcohol they both have consumed, he doesn't trust either of them to behave themselves. He's all for using alcohol as a little social lubrication, but he isn't interested in sex either party will regret in the cold light of day.

"Total dick, huh?" he asks in sympathy, when Cas can't seem to find the words to describe his brother. Cas shakes his head and mutters something and drinks his whiskey. Dean watches as he tips his head back, watches his throat work as the whiskey goes down, then takes the bottle and takes a sip himself. They're huddled together now, pressing into each other for warmth, the building behind them not quite blocking the wind.

"Michael believes our family history should mean more to me," Cas says, carefully enunciating each word. He looks at his free hand as if he's only just now noticing the bottle's absence.

"Michael… Milton. The mayor?" Dean says, wrapping his arms around himself and tucking the whiskey bottle against his side, the one Cas isn't pressed into. Cas looks around a little blankly, searching for the missing booze.

"Yes," he says, looking mournfully into the empty cup.

"The hell do you mean, family history?" Dean asks, because he's never heard that phrase outside of a medical setting. Cas' eyes darken and he shakes his head, and Dean leaves it alone.

After a few minutes' silence, Cas looks at Dean, his expression so honest and open Dean can't help but grin. "I don't like having a brother for the mayor."

Dean tries to figure if Cas is saying he doesn't like Michael being mayor, or he doesn't like the mayor being Michael, or he doesn't like Michael period. After about four seconds he decides it's too much logic for him and gives up.

"Don't think I would, either," he says.

"Dean, he's turning blue," Sam scolds from Cas' other side.

"Right," Dean replies, and stands up. Cas kind of falls over without Dean to lean against, sprawling over the curb and blinking up at Dean in confusion. "Let's get you home."

"My keys are locked in my car," Cas says, pointing towards the car in question. "Or I'd be home."

"You can crash at my place, Don Juan," Dean tells him, and ends up having to almost carry Cas to the car while Sam hovers helplessly by, worried and frustrated and useless.

Dean calls Jo from the car to ask her to make sure the shop gets locked up and ignores her demanding to know where he'd gotten off to and if- and how- he'd managed to find someone to take home. He hangs up and looks at Cas, huddled almost aggressively against the vents blasting out warm air.

"Feeling better?" he asks.

"No," Cas mutters hoarsely. "I don't know why I let him do this to me."

"He's family," Dean says with a helpless shrug. He gets it. He can't explain _how_, because as far as the rest of the world is concerned, his family shattered when he was twelve, but he gets it. Sam's driven him to drink more often than he cares to think about.

Cas slides him a grateful look and presses his frozen fingers to the vent and says nothing else.

Once they're at Dean's apartment, Cas looks worse, pale and still trembling and even swaying a bit. Dean gives him a sweatshirt and thick flannel pants to sleep in and lets him take the bed, because the couch is faux leather and cold. While Cas is in the bathroom- possibly brushing his teeth or dry-swallowing aspirin, more likely standing there in abject misery and hating himself- Dean changes quickly into his own pajamas.

"You looking out for Cas, now, too? What are you, some sort of dysfunctional guardian angel?" he asks Sam. For a moment his brother looks pained, like he's just bitten into a lemon. Then something thumps loudly against the wall in the bathroom and Dean looks over, waiting until Cas shuffles out, looking no worse off than he had when going in. When he looks back at Sam, his bitchy sister is smirking knowingly.

"Did you want me to stop?" he asks.

An hour ago, Dean would have said _hell yes_. He would have said let the poor bastard have some privacy. An hour ago, Dean hadn't known Cas' family could drive him to chugging whiskey in the parking lot, or that he hadn't enough sense to come in out of the cold.

"Shut up," he says, because Sam's smirk is all triumph and smugness, and goes to bed.

* * *

The problem, Dean thinks later, is that _he'd_ decided Cas was done drinking tonight. Cas, apparently, has other ideas.

"Dean. Dean. _Dean_."

Dean tries to roll away from the hand pushing clumsily at his shoulder, tries to push back without opening his eyes to locate the disturbance. Finally he lifts his head and snarls, "What?"

Cas is kneeling beside the couch, eyes big and earnest. He smiles tentatively at Dean, who groans at the sight of the almost-empty bottle in his hands.

"Oh good," he mutters. "You found the whiskey again. I was worried you wouldn't."

"Michael thinks you're a bad influence," Cas tells him gravely.

"Is that what you were so upset about?" Dean asks his pillow.

"No," Cas says, tone suggesting it was patently ridiculous, which, _ouch_. "It was only something he said. He always prepares a list of things to complain about before he talks to me."

Dean decides to let the insult slide and focuses on the Cas' Brother Is A Dick aspect. "Man, that sucks."

"I thought you should know," Cas says, leaning forward a bit and bracing the whiskey bottle against Dean's ribs. "I don't think that. He's wrong." He pauses, then shifts around so he's sitting beside the couch, and says to the room at large, "I don't think you're dangerous anymore."

"Thank you," Dean replies dutifully, even though Cas is making zero sense. He's ninety-nine percent certain that noise he can hear is Sam sniggering in the background.

Cas just kind of sits there then, apparently out of words, looking lost and confused. Like he's waiting for something. Dean takes all those selfish urges and pushes them aside and looks at the other man patiently.

"Go to bed, Cas," he says.

Cas gets up- on his third try, but who's counting- and shuffles to the hallway leading to the bedroom. There he hesitates a moment longer. "Happy birthday, Dean," he says. By the time Dean lifts his head again to look at him, he's gone.

* * *

One day in spring, Sam points out a girl in the grocery store. By the time Dean makes it outside after her all he gets is half a license plate as she drives off. He calls Cas immediately but they're too slow; by the time Dean's got her address she's already dead. He sees just enough of the gore-drenched room to haunt his nightmares for months before the cop on the scene hustles him out.

Cas is arriving just as Dean is being shown out. He takes Dean from the officer, guides him outside as Dean stumbles blindly along, holds his shoulders as he throws up into the bushes and says nothing when some of it splashes onto his shoes. He sends Dean home and comes by hours later, with the news that they've tracked down the victim's blood-splattered ex-boyfriend.

Dean remembers the blood soaked room, remembers the sedan in the winter that missed him by inches, remembers Cas in the parking lot with whiskey in his veins and his brother's poison in his ears, remembers Sam's funeral- and months and years of frustration and anger and fear all boil up and over in one moment. He catches Cas roughly, pins him- slams him, really- against the door, and kisses him hard. Cas digs his fingers into Dean's arms and pulls him in tighter and kisses back.

Sam makes a noise like a guinea pig that's been stepped on and flees with an "oh, god, Dean, not cool!"

Cas wears his gun in a shoulder holster, the metal warm where it's pressed up against his ribs, and Dean wouldn't admit on pain of death how disturbingly hot that is. He's too focused on getting clothing off to spare any consideration for this new fetish at the moment.

"You don't go to another crime scene without me, Dean," Cas tells him. Dean bristles at the total authority in his tone and bites Cas' lower lip, kissing away the hurt.

"I'll do what I want," he says defiantly.

"It's illegal."

"Then arrest me," Dean says, and knows instantly from the stubborn look Cas gives him that he will do exactly that. It's even hotter than the gun thing.

Dean tries to back up, tries to move them away from the door, but Cas is evidently still angry about the whole crime scene thing and trips him, sending him sprawling. All the breath gets driven out of Dean's lungs when Cas goes down with him and lands on top of him.

Cas kneels on his chest and patiently waits until Dean can breathe again, at least as much as Cas lets him. For a long moment the detective merely looks down at him. Then he jerks his chin up, defiant and challenging. "In the interest of full disclosure," he says, "I like you."

"I noticed," Dean smirks.

"But I am not," Cas continues, flat-out ignoring Dean, "interested in a commitment."

"Me neither," Dean tells him, which is only mostly true- he is definitely very interested in having as much sex with Cas as possible, but he's fairly sure that isn't the sort of commitment Cas means.

It's apparently the right answer, for Cas gets up and lets Dean stand up and follows him without question to the bedroom. He slaps Dean's hand away when it strays a little too close to the gun, takes both it and his badge and tucks them safely away in a drawer in Dean's dresser, then lets Dean haul him down across the bed. Dean fights with Cas' stupid button-up shirt and then his belt, when Cas takes over that obviously too-complicated task. Cas bucks his hips up and slides his pants right off in a move that Dean thinks is totally unfair- since he's forgotten how zippers work and his jeans are too tight on him to slip off like that- until he realizes it means Cas is half-naked in his bed. Dean rolls back over Cas, pinning him down and sliding a hand across his hip as he mouths at Cas' neck.

Cas grabs hold of Dean's shoulders hard enough to bruise when Dean wraps his fingers around Cas' cock, all movement jerking to an abrupt halt as Cas stops and trembles and waits for Dean. Dean strokes once, then brings his hand up to lick his own fingers, getting them just wet enough before returning to Cas' cock. Cas squirms under him, rolling his hips in rhythm to Dean's frustratingly gentle stroking, panting and digging his nails into Dean's skin. He's mostly silent, though, which Dean doesn't like so much.

"Do me a favor," he says against Cas' pulse point. Cas makes an irritated noise Dean chooses to take as _what_. "Talk to me."

"About what?" Cas demands.

"Anything. Don't care. Recite the periodic table, if you want. Just… talk."

Cas is silent for a long moment, long enough that Dean's about to tell him that's pretty much the opposite of what he's supposed to be doing, then he grits out, "Helium."

"Hydrogen," Dean corrects, because even he knows that.

"You didn't say in order," Cas snaps defensively, and Dean laughs. Because Cas, clever smart Cas, can't remember the order, and Dean did that to him.

"Molybdenum," Cas tells him, as Dean pauses to get his stupid jeans off. "Selenium. Ytterbium."

"Such a nerd," Dean says fondly. He shifts his hips and wraps his hand around both their cocks and Cas cuts himself off halfway through _neodymium_ with a sharp gasp.

"Rhodium," he says, stubborn to the last, and whines and reaches between them to wrap his hand around Dean's wrist. Dean braces himself with his free arm and leans down to kiss Cas again, those blue eyes glazed-over and focused on something a million miles away. Then they flicker down to Dean's face and Cas is giving him that _look_, that intense only-thing-in-the-world look, and Dean finds himself wanting to squirm and duck away from that. He distracts Cas with a twist of his wrist and a small thrust of his hips and Cas' back arches up off the bed.

"Einsteinium," Cas says, stumbling over the word and adding another syllable in there somewhere, and whines again. "I can't… Dean-"

Dean keeps the stroking twist up, kissing Cas again. He can feel Cas shuddering, his breath catching. Then Cas jerks up with a sharp choked-off cry, his release spilling hot and wet between them. The hand on Dean's wrist slides up, thumb slipping up the underside of Dean's cock, and Dean jerks at the surprise contact. When Cas drags his thumb over the head Dean comes hard, rocking shallow little thrusts into the curve of Cas' hip until he can think again.

Cas sprawls out under him, content and lazy, like there's not a single bone left in his whole body. He offers Dean a shy smile, the bold angry demanding side sated by the orgasm and leaving the familiar old quiet socially awkward Cas behind.

Dean starts moving again after a minute, getting up to go get a wash cloth from the bathroom and promptly tripping over his own jeans, which he hadn't actually removed so much as just pushed down around his ankles. He recovers before he hits the floor, hikes his jeans up around his hips and walks out of the room with whatever dignity he can muster. When he comes back Cas is on his cell phone, hanging up even as Dean walks in.

"I need to get back to the station," he says while making no actual attempt to move. "I left while they were processing the boyfriend."

"He did it," Dean says, stretching himself back out beside Cas. "Case closed."

"This isn't television, Dean. The process is not that simple." He still isn't moving, unless you count tipping his head up as Dean nuzzles his neck. Dean can't help but smirk- he'd left marks scattered over that pale skin, marks that will darken to bruises within hours, and between that and his hair, which Dean had dragged his hand through a few times, and the sated look in his eyes, _everyone and their mother_ will know exactly what they did. And yeah, maybe it means he's petty and smug and a total child, but Dean really likes the thought of that.

"So go," Dean says, and to his disappointment, Cas actually rolls off the bed and gets up, which is not what Dean had been hoping for at all. He drops himself to the mattress and watches as Cas tries to untangle his shirt, which had gotten turned half inside-out and one sleeve tied into a loose knot. "You'll be by later, right?" he asks, trying- and probably failing- to not actually sound like a girl.

"I don't see why not," Cas says, about as romantic as arranging a doctor's appointment. Then he lifts his arms to swing the shirt around his shoulders and Dean kind of gets lost in the curve of his hipbone. He rejoins the world a moment later when Cas reaches over and traces the tips of his fingers over Dean's jaw, one finger brushing gently over Dean's lips, careful and worshipful like he's still finding it hard to believe he's allowed to touch like this. Dean understands the feeling.

Then he's gone, stopping only long enough to grab the rest of his clothes and his gun and badge, and Dean can't help the stupid-silly grin he knows is spreading over his face.

* * *

A couple months ago, Dean had hired a sweet blonde thing named Jess, heart-faced and adorable and a taker of no shit in a way only deceptively fragile-looking women can be, the first employee he's kept for more than three consecutive weeks. She and Jo had formed some sort of Bond Of Sisterhood within moments of meeting and promptly started ganging up on Dean, who shamelessly tucks tail and flees like a manly coward whenever they set their sights on him. Jess is a former law student from Stanford; she'd given up the college thing after a few years and went flower child. She's a godsend, as far as Dean is concerned, because she can put up with him and his attitude and his bouts with drinking and his tendency to take off whenever he feels like it.

Sam has this ridiculous crush on her, and it's almost painful to see, because he has even less chance with her than the school janitor has with the head cheerleader. He tends to avoid her, because being around her is one of those times where it's painfully apparent just how cosmically unfair it all is, where he wants so desperately to be alive again, where he wants a hundred things he cannot, and will never, have.

Jess waits until Dean's circled around behind the counter, waits until she's finished getting change for the last customer in line and gently chased him away so they could have some privacy. "So how'd it go?" she asks.

There's a woman dead in all this, Dean remembers. Cas may be able to just shrug it off, storing it away in whatever mental filing cabinet that contains all of his job-related nastiness, but that's Cas. Dean doesn't do that for a living. He'd been putting on his shoes to go back to work and found a small rust-colored smear on the instep of the left shoe and had had to go take a shower and put on clean clothes fresh from the dryer. The shoes he'd thrown away.

"I didn't get there in time," he says, because of course Jess is aware of his superhero antics. He'd called her on the desperate rush to the victim's apartment, letting her know to expect him when she saw him, before he'd known they were going to be far too late. "She was already-"

Jess goes pale. "Oh, crap," she mutters. "Dean, I'm sorry."

"Cas sent me home," he finishes, leaving out the parts she would find really interesting, like Dean puking on Cas' shoes and Cas holding him and supporting and guiding him. Oh, and that whole sex thing, of course.

Jess just kind of stands there, obviously not knowing what to say. You can't win them all? True, but this is a human life they're talking about, that's far too flippant. You did your best? So cliché as to be useless. After a moment she wraps her arm around his shoulders, burrowing against his side and giving him a squeeze, comforting him as a sister would.

Then she reaches around with her other arm and pokes her nail into his ribs and says, "You slept with him didn't you?"

"What?" Dean asks, pulling away. "No. Didn't sleep with anyone. And, just so you know, even if I had, we're not doing that whole gay-and-his-hag thing, so forget it."

"Yeah, okay," Jess says in her long-perfected _I don't believe you for a second_ tone and gets back to fixing the customer's coffee. She calls him up and hands it over and apologizes with her cheery smile for the wait and once he's gone she turns back to Dean. "I'm glad for you, regardless," she says. "He's good for you."

"Too good for me," Dean says lightly, taking a can of whipped cream and squirting a healthy amount onto a plastic spoon. The last time he'd squirted the whipped cream directly into his mouth, Jess had read him the riot act.

"That's kinda up to him to decide," she points out. "And he likes you. He wouldn't hang around here if he didn't."

"He wants to know how I know someone's about to die," Dean says casually, licking the last molecule of whipped cream off the spoon and picking up the can for more. "Least, he did. That's why he started coming around to begin with."

"Really?" Jess asks, sounding surprised, as she takes the whipped cream away from him. "I thought he knew."

Dean snorts. "Hell no. Can't reveal my tricks."

Jess gives him a slightly pitying look. "He's a detective, and you've got a habit of turning up at crime scenes," she says reasonably. "I met a few cops in my college days, Dean. They don't stop asking questions just because people don't want to answer them. They stop asking questions when they get all the answers."

Dean sucks on the spoon thoughtfully as Jess moves away. Then he looks over at Sam, who gives him a worried look.

"He can't know," Dean says quietly.

"No, of course not," Sam agrees, and looks not the least bit reassured.

* * *

Cas comes to the shop just after closing, looking worn down and tired and generally baffled by the world as a whole. It's hardly his first time dealing with such senseless violence, but Cas is an organized man who expects everyone and everything around him to play by certain rules, and can't seem to understand why that just will never be so.

Dean kisses him, hesitant and unsure, still marveling at the newness of this. Cas sighs against his lips and rests his forehead against Dean's and looks so fucking tired, right in that second, that Dean will stand here forever if that's what Cas wants.

They go home instead. They order pizza, because Dean's cooking skills are on a strictly mac-and-cheese and sloppy joe's level, and drink beer and talk about nothing. When Cas pulls Dean in for another kiss, Dean isn't so much a gentleman that he refuses on account of Cas' obvious exhaustion. They leave the pizza half-eaten on the counter and stumble over each other on their way back to the bedroom. Cas shivers when Dean pins him down on the bed, and arches up against him when Dean slips two fingers into him, and moans brokenly and wraps his arms around Dean's neck when Dean slides into him, shamelessly begging between kisses that make Dean feel like an amateur. Dean takes it slow and gentle and won't let Cas hurry him, no matter how prettily he begs, until Cas is shuddering and clinging to Dean and barely making any noise at all, never mind coherent words.

He'll pay for that later, he thinks, afterwards, when Cas is a boneless heap on the bed, stretched out just enough that Dean will have to commit some pretty cringe-worthy contortionist moves just to fit in his own bed. Cas is watching him with narrow-eyed thoughtfulness but says nothing, only tipping his head back and doing something like purring when Dean trails his fingers through that dark hair.

Dean wakes up the next morning to an empty bed and BBC America blaring in the living room. He finds Cas wandering around his kitchen, wearing his pants and a shirt from Dean's laundry, cold piece of pizza in his hand as he aimlessly searches the kitchen for something he knows isn't there.

"Tea," he says when Dean offers to make coffee. From the look of him, that's all the intelligent conversation Dean will be getting out of him for a while.

"Real Americans don't drink tea," Dean argues. Cas looks at him, a look that says _ I know you're talking, because your mouth is moving and you're making noise, but I don't understand you and I don't care_.

"Tea," he says again, and holds out an empty coffee mug.

In the end, they compromise, in a way: Cas stops asking for tea, and Dean kisses him until they're both heady from the lack of air. Which is an unfair compromise to Cas, because Dean would've done that anyways, but Dean figures it'll be a while before his brain is moving up to speed enough to realize that.

Watching Doctor Who reruns in the living room, Sam gags.

* * *

Michael finds out about it. How, Dean doesn't know, although he wouldn't put it past the bastard to have someone following Cas. But it doesn't really matter; the important thing is, Michael finds out about it, and doesn't like it.

Dean learns this when a man comes into the shop one day, when Dean and Cas have been seeing each other for about a month. He's a middle-aged bureaucrat type, with a slick gunmetal-grey suit and a snake-oil-salesman smile. Dean reads used car salesman off him at first, at least until the guy gets his wallet out of his inner pocket and Dean sees the employee ID badge clipped to his shirt under his suit jacket. City Hall. Crap.

Jess sees it too, and to her credit, she doesn't bat an eye. She runs his credit card and tells him where to sign on the slip and tells him it'll be a minute, just as she's done a thousand times before. Then she turns and heads over to the stack of coffee cups, heading past Dean who is measuring out tea leaves, because the tea Cas likes doesn't come in those handy store-bought teabags and Dean is a sap. "Trouble," she mutters quietly as she takes a cup. Dean makes a noise of agreement but says nothing, watching instead as Mister City Hall tucks his wallet away again and smiles a harmless smile at Dean.

He meanders over after a few seconds. Dean holds his ground, even if he can't muster up a semi-polite greeting in return, only a vague sort of nod.

"Dean Winchester, right?" the guy says. He reaches his right hand over the counter, as if he honestly expects Dean to shake hands. "I'm Zachariah Adler. I work for Michael, Castiel's brother."

Dean eyes the offending hand like it's a particularly smelly dead fish. After a moment Zachariah gets the hint and retreats.

"I know who Michael is," Dean says mildly.

"Of course you do," Zachariah says, as if there had never been any doubt. He leans against the counter and makes a production of looking around the shop, then leans forward and peers out the window. Dean instinctively tries to follow his gaze and can feel his hackles rising when he realizes the guy is looking at his car.

"That's a nice car," Zachariah says. He looks back at Dean. "Forgive me, I'm not really a car guy. That's a Chevy, right? Seventy-something?"

" '67 Impala," Dean answers by rote, and if this guy so much as _breathed_ on his baby-

"He hasn't done anything to your car," Sam says, a calm steady anchor at Dean's elbow. "Calm down. He's trying to piss you off."

" '67? Probably gets horrible gas mileage," the rat continues, talking over Sam.

"Yeah, but she's worth it," Dean says, forcing himself to stay calm.

"Oh, I bet." And Zachariah goes back to looking around the shop, focusing on Jess for a moment as she hands him his coffee, his oily smile visibly repulsing her. She beats a hasty retreat and Dean can't say he blames her when she ducks into the back room. "This was old Daniel Elkins' place, right?"

"Yeah," Dean says. "He had no family, so he left it to me."

"Huh." Zachariah puts his coffee on the counter and slides his hands into his pockets, looking around some more. If it came down to a battle of wills, Dean doesn't doubt he'd win, but this is a different sort of head game.

After a long moment he leans forward and says, soft and not unduly menacing, "If your boss has a problem with who his little brother is going out with, maybe he should try talking to him."

"Oh, he will," Zachariah says, far too quickly for Dean's peace of mind. "But that's not for you to worry about. I'm here, on my own, to talk to you."

Dean stares at him. It's probably not his friendliest look.

"You and Castiel…" Zachariah shakes his head, sadly, as if they're just a couple of crazy kids a la Romeo and Juliet. "You come from different worlds, Dean. You have literally nothing in common. How long do you think this can last?"

"Long enough for everyone to have a good time," Dean says coldly. "After that, who knows. Not like it's any of your business."

"I don't want anyone getting hurt, Dean," Zachariah says, the voice of reason. "Especially you. There are things you don't know about Castiel, about his whole family."

"Fair enough," Dean shrugs. "There are things Cas doesn't know about me."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that," Zachariah says on a chuckle.

Dean's cell phone buzzes, saving him from having to figure out what the hell that's supposed to mean. He looks at the screen and tries not to grin when he sees it's Jess. "Sorry. Gotta take this."

"Right, of course," Zachariah says, taking a step back, leaving his coffee on the counter. He glances at his watch and sighs. "Well, lunch break's over. I have to get going. It was nice chatting with you, Dean." And he smiles once more before heading out.

"What the hell was that?" Sam asks.

"He's gone," Dean tells Jess, who says _okay_ and hangs up. He tucks his cell phone back into his pocket and runs his hand over his face. "I don't know," he says to Sam. He kind of wants to call Cas and warn him that Michael's got a bug up his ass, but he figures Cas already knows. He's been dealing with his crazy, crazy family his whole life, surely he's run into Michael's warped protective-big-brother thing before.

Unless this isn't something Michael's done before, and there's something special about Dean that bothers him.

Dean shrugs it off and goes back to work.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: More of Michael-is-a-jerk. Also, bonus Bobby. One day I will actually write a fic that includes him and gives him an actual scene, or at least more than just a handful of lines. I feel like I'm cheating him. He's too important a part of the boys' lives to just ignore, but I can't seem to do him justice, and kind of dodge the issue by having him in the fic without actually having him _in_ the fic.

* * *

Michael has his little chat with Cas that Friday, on Cas' day off, effectively ruining the day for everyone involved. It seems set to ruin the entire weekend- Cas is wound up and agitated, all simmering anger not quite covered by his usual mask of disinterest, and he sharpens his metaphorical claws on Dean's hide more than a few times- until Sam makes a suggestion that Dean would've kissed him for if he could.

Bobby isn't exactly thrilled to have Dean just show up on his doorstep Saturday morning- with company, no less- but he grudgingly allows them to stay the night, when Dean asks him. This feels suspiciously like the Meet The Parents phase of a relationship, which Dean has achieved exactly once before now. Aside from Sam, Bobby is the closest thing to family Dean has, and Dean is surprised at how nervous he is. Cas is difficult at best to like and Bobby doesn't like anyone and he's here wanting them to be instant friends.

Grumbling and muttering, Bobby heads back inside as Dean goes over to the car, where a still-cranky Cas is sulking because Dean not only made him get up early on the weekend, but also got- and then made him drink- coffee in place of his normal tea. Dean leans over the passenger window, which Cas rolls down after a few moments of petulant glaring.

"Be nice for two days," Dean says. "For me. Please?"

"I said I didn't want commitment, Dean," Cas growls. "This is something that comes with commitment."

"No, this is something that comes with the Save the Cas project, because Jo told me she's gonna shoot you if she sees you again before Monday," Dean snaps, even though he'd promised himself he was going to be nice to Cas, because it's not Cas' fault his brother's a grade-A dick.

Cas gets out of the car and looks around. Dean looks around as well, seeing the place with fresh eyes for the first time in twenty years. It's a scrapyard, there's no escaping that; it's not the most aesthetically pleasing, but it's home. He's never regretted growing up here, and he understands, now, that leaving him with Bobby was the kindest thing his father has ever done for him.

"You lived here," Cas says, and it's not quite a question.

"Yup."

"But you moved back to Kansas when you were nineteen," Cas adds, as if he's reciting from Dean's autobiography, and Dean squirms a little.

"There's no place like home," he says ironically, and knows from Cas' blank look that even that iconic reference sailed right over his head. "Never mind." And he heads towards the house, leaving Cas to follow or stay behind as he will.

Bobby's got the news running on the TV, some breaking report about an elusive serial killer giving the feds the slip down in Texas. Dean turns it off, since the general atmosphere isn't going to be helped by talk about murderers. Then he stands back and waits, sharing nervous glances with Sam, as Cas pauses in the doorway and he and Bobby study each other.

"So you're a cop," Bobby says finally, and Dean winces a little. 'Cop' is a dirty word in Bobby's dictionary, but it's not like Dean could get away with not telling him, not when Cas has _cop_ written over every inch of him.

Cas looks at him, pins Bobby down with that crazy-intense stare, and it Bobby lasts an admirable twenty seconds before he starts shifting uncomfortably. "Yes," he says, and then, because he's Cas and Cas is nothing if not brutally, tactlessly honest, "But Dean would prefer it if you not hold that against me."

Sam makes a choking noise, like he's trying not to laugh. Dean doesn't know why he bothers.

Bobby snorts and rocks back a bit, no longer defensive and challenging, and Dean relaxes as well. "Fine," the older man says. "Just don't arrest no one and we'll be okay."

Cas slides Dean a questioning look, part am-I-doing-this-right and part is-he-mocking-me. Bobby snorts at it and goes to get himself some coffee and that's pretty much the end of the whole thing. Neither Bobby nor Cas are the sort of people who have to talk everything to death, and somehow, in those few words, they reached a tentative peace with each other.

* * *

Dean takes Cas out into the scrapyard that afternoon. He shows off the cars, points out which ones are salvageable and which ones aren't, which junkers have decent parts that Bobby will remove before selling the corpse for scrap or just leaving it to rust. He shows him how to climb over the stacks of cars- he'd spent seven years treating this place as his own personal jungle gym slash obstacle course, he knows all the tricks. He helps work on one of the repair jobs, and Cas knows absolutely nothing about cars but picks things up fast and follow orders perfectly.

He tells Cas about working here, how Bobby hadn't paid him but did tell him he could pick out a car and fix it up and Bobby would pay for any replacement parts, which is how he got the Impala. He talks about his baby until he's hoarse and looks up to see Cas giving him a look. Not the normal crazy-man-talking look people normally give Dean when he talks about his car, but something else, something almost like yearning. Which is ridiculous, because everything Dean's got, everything Dean is, is Cas' as well.

One of the cars has a towel worked into its engine, shredded and torn and stuck in tight places and wrapped into and around the entire bloc. They work most of the afternoon and well into the evening to get it out, and Cas takes over storytime as they do so. He talks about his family, his brothers_. _There's the oldest, the twins, only seconds apart in age but different as night in day in every regard. He doesn't say their names but Dean knows well enough to know Michael is the older twin.

He talks about Gabriel, the family clown, about his jokes and his pranks. Dean smiles and even laughs once or twice, thinking he needs to meet this Gabriel, until Cas' soft smile fades and sadness tinges his voice as he tells Dean about how Gabriel had simply vanished one day, leaving and never looking back after their father died because he couldn't deal with Michael being the boss.

He talks about his sister Anna, dead in a car crash at age eleven. The driver, Michael's twin Nick, left soon after that, and he also was never heard from again. There's something else there, something he isn't saying, something fragile and sore and probably explosive, and Dean remembers the family history comment from his birthday, and decides he doesn't want to know.

Dean doesn't talk about Sam. He doesn't know what to say, or how to say it. He doesn't know how he's supposed to mourn a brother twenty years dead that he never really lost.

They get the towel out of the engine and entertain themselves in less puritanical ways until Bobby hollers at them to get their asses inside, the food's ready, and they eat chili at the kitchen table like some real family and Bobby huffs at them about everything in general.

Cas' wandering hands had left motor oil in Dean's hair and black fingerprints on his skin. It takes twenty minutes and a second pair of hands in the shower to wash it all off.

* * *

They share a room that night, but there's nothing all that interesting about that- Bobby makes it abundantly clear he's only just a few feet down the hall and the walls are thin in these old houses. Which is more than a little embarrassing, given how Bobby glares at Dean as he says it.

Dean's only just sat down on the edge of the bed to take his shoes off when Sam catches his eye. His brother makes a _follow me_ gesture and walks right through the wall leading outside, which is just wrong.

"I left something outside," Dean says to Cas. "Be back in a few minutes."

Cas, already mostly asleep, makes a noise like _mmmrrgh _and buries his head under the pillow.

It's nice outside and Cas had left the window open, so Dean picks his way through the yard until he's at the back fence, far enough from the house that no one will hear him talking to himself out here. Sam follows, strolling along, hands in his pocket and head tipped back so he can study the stars. Dean wonders idly, briefly, what his brother would have been, what he would have done with his life, had it not been stolen from him.

"So," he says idly as he meanders along. "About Cas."

"What?" Dean's head comes up and he stares at his brother. "No. No fuckin' way you're doing this now, Sam." He turns and makes as if to head back inside, but Sam moves into his way, knowing full well his brother doesn't like walking through him.

"This is serious, Dean," Sam says, pulling out the concerned puppy look he saves for serious business. Dean looks away, jaw tense, before looking back. "I know you're not into the whole talking thing, believe me, I get that. But we need to talk about this."

"Don't think so," Dean says, wishing he'd thought to bring a beer out with him. If he'd known this was going to be about feelings and all that crap, he'd have come out here armed better, or simply skipped it all and gone to bed.

"I like Cas," Sam says, ignoring Dean's petulance. "Bobby likes him."

"Bobby doesn't like him," Dean counters with a scoff. "He's said maybe twenty words to him, and half those were insults."

"Yeah, maybe, but Cas is a _cop_, Dean. That Bobby didn't escort him off the property at gunpoint is amazing."

Dean shakes his head a little, because he'd been thinking something similar and it's a little scary how much he and Sam are on the same page. "He says he doesn't want commitment, Sam. And why should he? He's too good for me." His throat closes up on the last few words and he chokes on them, forcing them out roughly. Sam smiles and looks at him like he's an idiot.

"Really?" he asks. "I don't think so. You've got your own business, your own house, you're no longer getting arrested every other week-"

"Because of Cas."

"- all you need to do is cut down on the drinking and… Let's face it, Dean, you can kick and scream and cry about it as much as you want, but you're almost respectable." Sam says the last part with a wry smile, as if he can't quite believe it. "You even pay taxes and everything."

"Since when?" Dean demands. He's never done taxes in his life that he's aware of. Given the epic disaster that is the American tax system, he's pretty sure he'd remember.

"Since always. That's why Ellen shows up every month and camps out in your shop for a week in April, remember?"

Dean gives his brother an incredulous look, not sure how to process this whole encounter. Sam can see how far out to sea his brother is and gives a put-upon sigh.

"Just… don't screw this up, is what I'm saying," he says. "I know you're anti-commitment, and your philosophy is easy come, easy go, but this? This is something worth fighting for. Okay?"

"Okay," Dean says. "Is this the part where we have a deep, cleansing, group cry, or are we done?"

"Y'know, Dean, sometimes I don't know why I bother," Sam tells him irritably. "Yes, we're done, you child."

"You watched Dr. Phil last night, don't you?" Dean asks as he heads back towards the house. Sam sighs and rolls his eyes and doesn't actually deny it.

"Not a whole lot to do at night, Dean," he says, something dark edging his tone. Dean swallows the first few questions that try to rise up and focus on the important one.

"This isn't your way of saying you're leaving, or whatever. Is it?"

"No," Sam says quickly. He glances at Dean and looks away again. "No. I'm just- I want you to be happy, all right? You can call me Samantha and a girl all you want, but that's all it is."

Dean's still wary, still watching his brother like he'll vanish if left alone for a second.

"Cas can probably pull your file, if you want," he says carefully. "I know the police got jack squat, but if I asked him-"

"No, Dean. Don't use him like that." Sam shrugs. "It's okay. It sucks and it's not fair, but I'm used to it."

They're at the house, Dean reaching to open the door, when Sam abruptly says, "I don't remember most of it."

"Probably for the best," Dean says gruffly, wanting this conversation to be over even more than the last one.

"I think," Sam begins, then pauses. "The man who… I think he did something- did this. To me."

Dean looks at the door, close enough that he could count the subtle rings in the wood grain. He wishes- so desperately wishes- that it had been him that day. Everything would have been so much better that way.

There's nothing he can say to ease the pain, because in this one way, Dean can never truly understand Sam's suffering. So he says nothing, and goes inside instead, goes upstairs and buries his face in Cas' neck and is asleep long before the man rolls over and hooks an arm around Dean's waist and whispers an apology against his hair.

* * *

It's a six hour drive and the company's not the greatest- Cas isn't exactly good company even on his best day, and Sam is in a strange disconnected mood all day- but Dean personally thinks the whole trip was worth it. If nothing else, it got Cas away from the poison that is his older brother, at least for a couple days.

They stop at the gas station and Dean gets beef jerky and leaves Cas to stare at the eight hundred varieties of travel-sized Pringles as he heads back out. Sam is standing beside the Impala, arms crossed, wearing what Dean fondly calls his 'heart attack face'.

"Dude seriously, what is your problem?" Dean demands. Sam gives him a confused look. "You've been off all day. What crawled up your ass?"

"Do you think-? No." Sam looks back at the store. Dean waits him out. "I just- something you said last night made me think, and I- I don't know. It's weird."

"Uh huh," Dean says. "Care to explain what the hell you're talking about?"

Sam opens his mouth but doesn't actually say anything for a long moment. He pushes his hair out of his eyes- his hair is downright ridiculous now, down to his shoulders, and thick and soft-looking in a way Dean knows most women would kill for- and groans. "I don't know, Dean. It's just something that's been bugging me. I can't figure out what."

"Okay," Dean replies, and never let it be said he can't be the supportive brother every once in a while. "You figure it out, you let me know."

"Yeah," Sam says, and that's the end of the conversation, if not the weird.

* * *

He almost asks Cas about the police file anyway, just because it's _Sam_.

The police hadn't been much help, twenty years ago. They couldn't even confirm it was a murder- just plain weird, is how the investigating detective had put it, with a comment to John when he thought Dean couldn't overhear that they were lucky the body was found at all. Dean's been around cops too much in the interim to hate their kind for failing Sammy like that, but it still galls him.

In the end, he leaves it alone. No one's touched the case in twenty years. There was nothing then, there will be nothing now, and in the end, it doesn't really matter. He still has Sam, in a way, and that's good enough. It has to be.

* * *

Dean's entire world changes on a Thursday in late June.

It's been a long time coming, really. Dean's had another chat with Zachariah and Cas had some epic argument with Michael that ended with the younger brother down on the firing range, where he tacked a picture of his brother's face over the paper target and by the time he was done with it the picture was no longer identifiable. But apparently Michael got the memo- or, at least, the idea that it have just as easily been him rather than just a picture- since he backed off, and things have been quiet since. Too quiet.

Then that fateful Thursday, he's in the back of the shop organizing things, and he hears Sam swear loud and long up front. A moment later his brother appears, pale as- hah!- a ghost.

"It's Cas," he says, all he needs to say, and Dean drops everything and darts out front.

The TV in the corner of the lobby normally plays whatever channel the last customer to locate the remote wanted; this time, it was on some stupid daytime soap until the breaking news program interrupted it.

Dean hears 'explosion at the crime scene' and 'police officers injured' and 'two confirmed dead' and stops breathing.

He looks at Sam, when he remembers how to move again, looks at Sam because Sam's supposed to _know_ about shit like this. He knew the girls in the Wendy's were going to die after half a second of looking at them. He knew the woman in the supermarket, who never got within a hundred feet of him, was going to die. But now, the one time it matters most, he gets nothing. Sam just stares back, wide-eyed and guilty.

Then Jess grabs Dean's arm and hauls him around. "Go," she says, pressing his keys into his hand. "Just go, Dean. I've got it covered here."

"You…" he begins, feeling very stupid.

"I tried to call him," she tells him. "His phone's disconnected."

Which means damaged, which makes sense because there was a fucking _explosion_. Dean wakes up, shakes off his shock. He takes his keys and steps around her and stops at the door long enough to offer her a weak smile.

"I don't pay you enough," he says, which is true, and so very inadequate. He can't say what he really means, though- the words get tangled in his throat and he hasn't got the time to sort it all out.

"No, you don't," Jess agrees. "Now go."

He goes.

* * *

The police don't have the time or patience to deal with him. They point him in the direction of the hospital where all the injured were taken, shamelessly making him someone else's problem. He leaves without protest- or word on Cas- before some cop with a grudge can arrest him for being a general nuisance.

One of the nurses in Admittance is a long-time customer of Dean's and gladly checks on Cas for him. He's alive, is the most important thing. He's not even too badly hurt, she tells Dean- he'd been outside when the explosion hit. He'd been near one of the windows when the building blew and took a load of shattered glass to his right side, mostly his shoulder and upper arm due to the natural human reaction to cover the face, but the doctors say it's not serious and are doing some minor surgery to clean it all out. That's all the nurse is willing to tell him, though, because he's not family and customer loyalty only goes so far.

Dean backs off, heads to one of the waiting rooms and ducks into a different hallway, bouncing around aimlessly. He'd long ago learned the trick to avoid attention in hospitals; act like you belong, like you know where you're going, and everyone around you will be too busy to question it. In this area, having a ghost for a brother is a blessing, for Sam can roam anywhere, even right into surgery, without anyone yelling at him.

Dean's on the verge of calling the hunt off and just asking someone where Cas is, repeatedly and loudly, until he gets an answer, when Sam suddenly comes around the corner right in front of Dean and says, in a low urgent voice, "Stop!"

He freezes. A moment later he eases around the corner, peeking at whatever's got Sam so upset. There's a man a ways down the hallway, sitting in one of those godawful plastic chairs and reading a magazine.

"That's Michael," Sam says. Dean glances back at him briefly then peers closer at the man. He's in his forties, dark hair going fashionably grey at the temples, face strong and classically handsome. He looks like Cas a little bit, in the line of his jaw, in the way he carries himself and how he tilts his head.

Dean ducks back around the corner and presses himself against the wall and gives Sam an _oh shit_ look. Today of all days, right fucking now, he is so far from in the mood to deal with Michael, it's not even funny.

"Cas is his brother, Dean," Sam the Eternal Optimist says. "He's probably here because he's worried."

Dean doesn't believe that, and doubts Sam really does either. He can't imagine why else the mayor would be here, though.

"I know you're there, Dean," a voice calls from the other hallway. "You might as well come over here and sit down."

His voice is deep and rich and smooth, smooth as silk, smooth as expensive scotch. Dean thinks of Cas' rough rasp, how he sounds when gasps out Dean's name, how he lowers his voice to a growl that is felt more than heard when he's angry. He comes around the corner and walks over to the mayor and stands over him for a moment. Michael blinks up at him and offers him a bland smile and goes back to his magazine- _Vogue_, Dean sees, and he wants to crack a joke, but his wit fails him and he can't think of anything to say.

Michael has brown eyes. Dean doesn't know if he could handle it if Michael's eyes were blue.

He sits down, careful to choose a chair not too close and not too far from Michael. The man ignores him and an awkward silence ensues. Every so often, Michael will look up and around, as if he's looking for something. Twice he catches himself at it and shakes his head and returns to his reading. The second time he does this Dean looks at Sam, who shrugs helplessly.

Finally Dean snaps. He turns to face the mayor and says, "Not gonna say anything?"

"I have very little to say to you, Dean," Michael says, less in a _because you're an idiot and I can't bother with you_ way and more in a _because we have absolutely nothing in common_ sort of way. Dean looks at Sam again- he can't help it, he just wants it all to make sense and Sam's generally pretty good at that sort of thing- and finds his brother is gone. He looks back in time to catch Michael watching him with narrow, thoughtful eyes. He drops his gaze instantly, but in that second Dean sees an entirely different animal dwelling behind those cunning eyes, something clever and dangerous and curious.

"You're not gonna blame me?" Dean asks, stupid bravado having firm control over the reins. "It's my fault Cas got blown up and all that?"

"Castiel chose his career path long before he met you, Dean," Michael tells the magazine, and Dean can't help but bristle at the familiar use of his name. "To think you have anything to do with his injury today is ludicrous, bordering on arrogant."

"You would know," Dean mutters petulantly, and Michael looks up at him again with that thoughtful cunning look. Thankfully he lets it go without comment.

Then Sam reappears, walking right through the wall, and Dean forces himself to keep his eyes on the wall ahead of him.

"He'll be fine," Sam says, collapsing into the chair next to Dean with a tired sigh. "They're finishing up now. They'll be letting you in to see him in about an hour." He leans forward to look at Michael around Dean and snorts wryly. "Going to be a long hour."

Dean smirks in agreement and sits back, folds his arms over his chest and stretches his legs out. A long hour indeed.

* * *

Michael doesn't last the hour.

Dean honestly thought he would, truth be told. He thought that, since Michael put in the effort to appear in the first place, he would stay until the end. Instead the mayor gets about a dozen calls on his cell- which he had set on vibrate and put on the end table next to him and which scared the crap out of Dean the first time it went off- one of which he finally answers. He says 'yes' four times and 'of course' once and hangs up and stands, carefully placing his magazine on the table.

"Leaving already?" Dean asks. Sam gives him a sharp look, no doubt telling him to shut up, but Dean can't seem to help himself. This man drove Cas to drinking in a parking lot in the dead of winter; this whole passive nice-guy routine is a load of shit, and Dean doesn't like being treated like a child.

"When my brother wakes up, let him know I was here, please," Michael says calmly.

"Could tell him yourself," Dean points out. Michael gives him a patient, patronizing look.

"My city is panicking, Dean," he says too calmly. "There was an explosion not too long ago, remember? My brother being among the injured buys me only so much time, and it is now up." He says this all like it's all brand-new to Dean. He probably took a class on how to make someone feel like an idiot without actually treating them like one.

Dean doesn't move his legs, forcing Michael to circle around him. He pauses a few feet away and looks back at Dean. "I'll let the staff know you're considered family."

"What the hell?" Dean asks after he's gone.

"I don't know," Sam says.

"No, seriously, what the hell?" Dean demands, pushing himself up and pacing along the hallway. Sam shrugs and runs a hand through his hair.

"I don't know, Dean," he says again. "I don't think this was an accident, you two meeting like that, but I don't know what he's trying to accomplish." He pauses, gives Dean an unfriendly glare. "Except maybe making you look like an immature idiot, but you don't really need his help with that."

"I _know_," Dean groans. "Every time I opened my mouth something stupid came out. Couldn't help myself."

"There's an easy remedy for that," Sam says sweetly, and Dean takes a moment to mourn that Michael and his brother will never get the chance to chat, because Sam is the only person Dean knows who might stand a chance against him in terms of verbal warfare.

"You're a bitch," Dean tells him lovingly. Sam snorts.

"You're a jerk," he shoots back.

A nurse comes out into the hallway, missing the brotherly bonding moment by a matter of seconds. Dean instantly turns towards her, and notices Sam leaning forward in his chair, and for one long second he feels so damn sorry for his brother it almost hurts. Cas and Sam haven't exchanged one word, haven't directly interacted in any way, and yet Sam cares for Cas almost as much as Dean does.

"Dean Winchester?" the nurse asks, looking at her papers more than Dean.

"Yeah," he says. She looks him over quickly and nods once, decisively.

"Detective Milton is out of surgery," she tells him. "It went fine, no complications or problems. He's under moderate sedation right now and is a bit woozy." She makes a face at the word, which Dean interprets as that by 'woozy' she means 'stoned out of his mind'. "He'll be fine in a few hours, and he can go home tomorrow. Until then, if you keep it quiet, you can visit him."

"Don't the police want to talk to him?" Sam asks, and Dean repeats his question. The nurse frowns.

"They already did," she says. "Detective Milton was conscious and lucid the ride over here. An officer rode in the ambulance with him. He refused to let the EMTs touch him until they were done talking." She frowns primly at that, obviously not liking that police work had dared to take precedence over medical care.

"Thanks," Dean says, and heads into the room beyond.

He's seen Cas asleep and drooling on his pillow, seem him so drunk he couldn't even stand, seen him begging for release and coming down from that high, and never has he seen Cas so vulnerable as he looks now. He looks up as Dean comes in, big blue eyes in a pale face, his right arm bound tight from shoulder to elbow, his left hand clumsily picking at his blanket.

"Hello, Dean," he says, and he smiles, a real smile that Dean's never seen before.

"Hey Cas," Dean replies, a little shaky, as he pulls the visitor's chair over. He'd come close, so very close, to losing this. Cas' gaze darts aimlessly around, as if he's searching for something, and he squirms in the uncomfortable bed a bit. Dean catches his wrist to settle his fidgeting and is surprised when, pointedly not looking at him, Cas rolls his wrist and slides his arm up until they're holding hands, long slender fingers nervously folding around Dean's.

Dean has been sleeping with this man for months- three months, two weeks, and four days, not that Dean is doing anything so obviously girly as _counting_- and they have never done anything that feels so intimate as this. It skates far too close to the commitment conversation they really need to have, should have had after their weekend in South Dakota. Their entire relationship had changed there, shifted in some indefinable way Dean can't quite put his finger on, but he knows they need to talk about it.

But even if Dean could bring himself to actually have a meaningful conversation, trying to deal with that now, while Cas is hopped up on all the fun drugs and Dean's heart has finally started beating again since the moment he heard the word _explosion_, isn't fair to either of them.

So, with all the grace of a lifelong expert, Dean dodges the emotional drama and changes the subject.

"Michael was here," he says. As far as dodging the emotional crap goes, that was a complete and utter failure, because Cas looks up, a look that breaks Dean's heart. Despite all the crap they've been through, put each other through, they're still brothers, and in that one second Cas' eyes are alit with hope and relief and the instinctive, bone-deep trust every sibling has in their older brother- that _oh good, you're here, you'll fix everything_ faith Dean's seen in Sam more times than he can count. The next second there's only disappointment, as Cas remembers the shitty hand he got dealt in regards to the whole family thing.

In a way, it makes sense. Michael's jackass behavior wouldn't bother Cas nearly so much if some part of Cas didn't still love his brother.

Dean glances instinctively back at his own brother, a silent plea to help him make this right. Sam, lingering in the doorway, can only shrug.

"He had to go," Dean says, and there are no words to describe how shocked he is to hear himself _defending_ that pompous dick. "Y'know. Explosion. Mayor needs to deal with things."

"He wanted you to see me," Cas says, back to picking at his blanket. He hasn't given up his grip on Dean's hand, though, so Dean laces his fingers through Cas' and tugs his hand away from the tormented fabric. "Like this."

There's no point in asking like what; Cas may not be rambling nonsense or talking to the table or giggling at everything, funny or not, but the drugs have had a huge effect anyways. He's open, vulnerable, all his masks stripped away and walls and torn down.

"Why?" Dean asks incredulously.

"Because he thinks I might do something stupid," Cas says

"You got nothing to worry about," Dean says fiercely, giving Cas' hand a squeeze. "I won't let you do anything you regret."

Cas smiles at him, a soft sad thing, and looks away. He seems almost disappointed.

"I will," he says. "I should have done this before, but I didn't. I promised."

"Promised who what?" Dean asks.

"My father, that I wouldn't… But he never met you," he says, like that makes any sense, and turns a pleading gaze on Dean. "He wouldn't have said that if he'd met you." He's not quite looking at Dean as he says it, seeming to be looking over Dean's shoulder, but when Dean looks back there's nothing but the doorway.

"Promise you wouldn't do what?" he asks, intense this time, leaning in closer to Cas. He's losing him, the drugs taking him under, and as he goes, he's losing his grip on reality. Cas looks at him, eyes wide and glassy, slowly sinking back into the bed. Dean figures he has about twenty seconds before the nurse comes in to kick him out.

"Talk to them," Cas says. Behind Dean, Sam makes a noise, a raw pained animal noise.

"Dean…" he begins. Dean ignores him.

"Your father's dead, Cas," he says, and some part of him has figured it out, figured it all out and is sick and shocked and betrayed, but the rest of him hasn't caught on yet. "You wanna talk to them, talk to them."

It's what Cas needed to hear. He smiles again, a sly guilty smile, like a child who's been told it's okay to eat dessert before dinner so long as mom doesn't catch him at it. Then his gaze slides right off Dean and moves to Sam, still hovering near the doorway, and the smile grows.

"Hello, Sam," he says.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Busy weekend ahead, folks, so the next chapter won't be up until sometime Monday. Pity me, for I shall be attending the family-reunion-slash-Christmas-party where, antisocial crowd-hater that I am, I will most likely be lurking in the bushes outside in the cold like some sort of petty criminal. Either that or attempting to drown myself in a bowl of Jell-O. I haven't decided which yet.

For those who are curious, this fic has two more chapters, all of approximately equal length as these four so far, and an epilogue-type thing about half as long as a chapter. Also, because I'm a nitpicker and I didn't like how things were flowing, I overhauled a few parts, one being near the end of this chapter, so total word count has gone up to thirty-seven thousand. That's three thousand extra words, folks. Don't ever say I don't love you.

* * *

Cas is released in the late morning the next day, armed with a sling that doesn't last past the parking lot and a buttload of prescriptions for pain meds and antibiotics. Dean sticks with him, as if afraid Cas will run away if Dean takes his eyes off him for two seconds. For all their closeness they never directly acknowledge one another.

Sam's waiting for them by the Impala. When Cas tries to circle around to reach the passenger side Sam moves in his way.

"You never walk through me," he says accusingly, as if this is some act of great evil. Cas kind of sinks in on himself, face turned away and eyes on the ground. "Everyone else does, except Dean and you. I should've known."

Cas, clever boy, says nothing. There's nothing he can say at this point.

"When where you going to tell us?" Sam demands. "_Where_ you going to tell us?"

"I wanted to," Cas says quietly, still not looking at Sam. Sam laughs harshly.

"Then why didn't you?" he snaps.

"In the car, both of you," Dean orders, and refuses to notice that Cas surrenders shotgun to Sam without a word. It makes sense a moment later, when Cas slides over to sit behind Dean, resting his good shoulder against the window and wincing as the motions jarred his injuries. And Dean would feel sorry for him, he really would, but he keeps seeing the poleaxed look on Sam's face when Cas had said hello to him. Kind of hard to feel sorry for Cas when he's been lying to them from day one.

"How long have you been able to see me?" Sam asks after a few minutes. Cas doesn't move, although he does lift his gaze to meet Sam's eyes in the rearview mirror.

"From the beginning," he says.

"Why the hell didn't you ever say anything?"

"I…" Cas begins, then sighs. He takes a moment to consider his approach. "I sought Dean out after that first night because I saw you. He did not acknowledge or interact with you that I saw, and I-" He looks out the window again and when he looks back, his jaw is set and his eyes hard. "I was raised to understand most spirits are not…"

"Friendly?" Dean quips, because he can kinda see it, the whole angry spirit thing.

"Human," Cas corrects flatly. "Not anymore."

"You thought I was dangerous?" Sam asks, and Dean laughs, because the idea is just ludicrous. Sam, dangerous? The kid may be big as a moose but he's a kitten in reality, all soft and cuddly, his fangs sharp but small.

"It's not funny, Dean," Cas says, his tone not angry, but bitterly experienced, and Dean instantly stops laughing. "I was afraid he might be influencing you."

"Which is why you hung around so much," Sam says accusingly. "You were, what, prepared to exorcise me?"

"Exorcism is for demonic possession," Cas says far too calmly, which is utterly terrifying, because his stating-a-fact tone kind of implies there is such a thing as demonic possession. Which Dean _does not_ want to know about.

"You thought Sam was influencing me… to save people's lives?" he asks instead.

"A ghost exercising such control over a living person is never a good thing, no matter the reason or results," Cas says, and if that isn't word-for-word out of some textbook or something, Dean will eat his shirt. "I had to be sure."

"All right," Sam says. "Well, obviously, at some point you figured out that I'm not _influencing_ him."

"You were arguing about which Star Trek is best," Cas tells them. "I realized then he could see you. Your brother is your anchor, keeping you connected to your former life. You would not have developed the powers, or… issues, associated with typical spirits."

"You've known about me for that long, known I'm not dangerous, and you're only just now telling us?"

Cas doesn't answer for a long time. When he starts talking again, he's looking out the window. "This… ability runs in my family. My father had it. He would stop and talk to them, help them if he could." He tips his chin up and swallows. "When my sister died he tried something. I don't know what, I was very young. I believe he attempted to bring her back and tie her here, as Sam is."

"I take it it didn't work," Sam says, softer now.

"It worked in a way," Cas corrects. "Better had it failed completely. Anna came back, but she was… different."

"Shit," Dean mutters, because he _knows_ that pain. He's been where Cas was, and he's so very lucky Sam is still Sam, and he hadn't even known to be grateful for that until just now. "Shit. I'm sorry, Cas. That sucks."

"She broke something in him," Cas says, not responding to Dean. "After we- afterwards, he had to go to a mental hospital. On one of his better days he made me promise to never speak to a ghost, to never look at one. He made me promise I would be just like a normal person."

"And I'll bet Michael reinforced that," Dean mutters sourly.

"Yeah, well, you still haven't answered the question," Sam says. "Why didn't you ever tell us? Do I seem evil or wrong to you?"

"No," Cas admits. "But Anna didn't either, at first." He hesitates a long moment, then says, "I wanted to tell you. I was going to, but Michael knew somehow. He…. convinced me it would be in everyone's best interest if I didn't."

"My birthday," Dean says as the pieces all click into place. "And all that crap with Zachariah about what I didn't know about you, how someone was going to get hurt- Michael doesn't care about _us_, he just wanted to get you away from Sam."

"So Michael can see ghosts, too?" Sam asks. Cas shifts uncomfortably and scowls at the window.

"No, he can't," he says. "The gift is selective. Only my older brother Nick and I have it. I don't know how Michael knows about Sam." He shifts again, reaching up with his left hand to work carefully at the knotted muscles in his right arm. "I pulled your case file, to see if there was something in there about it."

"Anything useful?" Sam tries after a moment, tentative and not daring to hope.

"Nothing," Cas sighs. "There was very little of anything in the file. The detective believed the body was moved postmortem and never found the original crime scene, so they had little to work with."

Sam flinches at the body thing, then sighs and scrubs his hands over his face.

"I didn't think so," he says. "I just… I don't know."

"There are others we can ask," Cas adds. "Professionals. They deal with this sort of thing often enough. I know one who will help, if we ask."

"Professionals?" Dean echoes, and maybe it's just him, but that word calls up a certain class of person who would be of zero use in this sort of situation. Sam gives him the stink eye, clearly knowing exactly where Dean's mind went.

"Psychics," Cas says, spitting the word out like it tastes bad.

"Don't think you're getting out of it that easy. You ignored me for seven months. You owe me." Sam sits back in the seat, arms folded and bitchface in full force, stubborn and angry and triumphant.

"I am very sorry, Sam," Cas says, solemn and serious.

"So, psychics. What do you think?" Dean asks his brother, voice quiet. Sam shrugs.

"It's worth a shot," he says.

"All right." He drums mindlessly on the steering wheel along to the beat of the song playing softly in the background. "Okay, Cas. Tell us about this psychic."

* * *

Cas' 'professional' lives in southern Illinois, about a twelve-hour drive, and it's one of the longest twelve hours of Dean's life, because Sam spends the whole trip jabbering excitedly to Cas. Dean gets it, really- Sam hasn't had anyone new to talk to in twenty years, and Dean, for all he's Sam's brother and Sam loves him, is not known for providing stimulating, intelligent conversation. Sam figures it's not worth it to be mad at Cas for almost eight months of imposed silence and solitude when he could be using Cas' guilt over it to force him to sit there and listen to Sam's twenty-year backlog of crap to talk about. Cas, for his part, tries to uphold his end of the conversations, but he simply isn't that big on talking, and ends up giving Dean sidelong glances for help whenever he's feeling overwhelmed, which is about every five minutes.

Dean waits until they're there, parked in the loose gravel lot and staring up at the run-down old house, before he finally asks. "Psychic, huh?"

"She believes so," Cas says, looking pained. Dean supposes, if both the psychic chick and Cas share the same ghost-seeing ability, then…

"So…" Dean begins, trying to keep a straight face. "Does that make you a psychic, too?"

If looks could kill, Dean would be on the ground right now, twitching and bleeding and breathing his last breath. Even Sam shuffles a little bit away from the intensity of Cas' glare.

Without waiting for any more asinine comments, Cas heads up the drive. He doesn't quite make it up to the porch before the front door is swinging open to reveal a curvaceous brunette.

"Ooh," Dean says, perking up a little and ignoring Sam's groan, and jogs up to the house.

"Afternoon, boys," the psychic says with a big easy grin. She gives Cas a friendly pat on the cheek and moves past him to regard Dean and Sam. "Well, this is my lucky day, isn't it."

"Uh, you _can_ see me, right?" Sam asks, pointing at his chest as if afraid she might be confused who 'me' means.

" 'Course I can," she says, like it's that easy, like he hasn't spent twenty years talking to only one person and having people walk right through him. "I'm Pam. Castiel probably didn't tell you much about me, he doesn't really like psychics."

"Yeah, we noticed," Dean says, making a noise caught somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.

"We met when he was still a nobody beat cop back in Chicago," she tells them. "Arrested me twice."

"Wow, Dean," Sam says, wide-eyed with false wonder and tone rife with bitchiness. "Isn't that how you and Cas met?"

Dean gives a mocking laugh in reply, then smiles at Pam. He likes her already. She's pretty and sassy, and as a brief recounting of his history will show, Dean likes pretty, sassy women.

"Anyway," Pam cuts in with careless ease that speaks of growing up with a multitude of siblings herself, "one time there was this one nasty murder, and one of the victims went vengeful spirit- those do exist, you know, not all ghosts are as nice and gentle as Sam here- and long story short, it came out that prettyboy over there could see ghosts just like me."

Prettyboy over there has gone inside, probably to escape storytime. Dean glances after him once, making sure he's gone, then says to Pam in a low voice, "He's not some sort of repressed psychic or something, right?"

"No," Pam says, and laughs. "No. What he has is a parlor trick. It's not good for much. No offense," she adds to Sam, who blinks and looked confused as to what he's supposed to not take offense at. "There's a lot more to it than just seeing ghosts."

"Great," Dean says. "So what about me? Am I just special?"

"I think Sam is the special one here," Pam says, eyeing Dean's gigantor brother like he's a particularly juicy filet mignon and she hasn't eaten in a week. Sam- who has never had a woman look at him like that- kind of leans away from her and smiles weakly and looks over her head to make a variety of faces at Dean that Dean thinks is Sam's way of spelling out _please help me_ in bitchface language. Because Dean is an awesome brother, he does not rescue Sam from the hot woman. Instead, he goes inside.

The movies make a great deal about how real men always turn down pain medication, refusing it in order to show how tough they are. The reality is, pain _hurts_, and no one wants to deal with that crap. He finds Cas in the kitchen, carefully spooling out his prescribed medication cocktail into the palm of his hand, grimacing all the while because liking the pain less than the pain meds doesn't mean he has to like the pain meds either. Dean doesn't try to help, having already fallen into that trap once- Cas is fumbling and clumsy, his right arm basically useless, and extremely bitter about it.

"So," he says, leaning against the kitchen table. "Pam is very…" He doesn't know how to finish that. Things have been awkward between him and Cas since the explosion. Understanding why he did it doesn't change the fact that Cas was lying to him from the moment they met, lying about something pretty damn important, and most likely still would be if it hadn't been for that moment of drug-induced weakness.

"Yes, she is," Cas says, as if that means anything.

A moment later there's footsteps in the hallway and Pam pauses in the doorway, sharp eyes bouncing back and forth from Dean to Cas.

"Am I interrupting something?" she asks.

"No," Dean says, at the same second Sam says "yes," and Cas shrugs one shoulder and gets himself a glass of water and takes his meds.

"O-kay," Pam says, drawing out the 'o'. She moves carefully around Dean and uses a hip to push Cas aside and opens the fridge. "Anyone want a beer? I think we could all use a beer."

"He can't have any," Dean says, jerking his chin towards Cas, and instantly feels like a grade schooler tattling to the teacher.

"I can't drink," Sam adds. Pam turns around to look at them, then shakes her head and grabs two beers.

"We might as well get to work," she says as she hands one bottle to Dean. "Outside," she adds when he pulls a chair out from the table. "Everyone was in a better mood outside."

* * *

Pam's idea of work is to sit on the porch or on the front fender of the Impala and talk. Most of the time it's stupid, innocuous stuff- weather, sports, favorite movies, first kiss, things like that- although occasionally she'll hone in on Sam and ask something about what he feels, or remembers, or something else somewhat related to why they're here. She flicks her bottle cap at him- through him- and smiles and apologizes when Sam protests. She has Cas give her as close to a word-by-word recounting of the police file as he can remember, focusing especially on the autopsy report, during which both Sam and Dean make their excuses and find somewhere else to be.

After about an hour of this, she goes inside and comes back out a few minutes later and hands Dean a small leather pouch.

"Just hold it," she says, looking at Sam more than Dean, and Dean takes it with a shrug.

Sam goes pale and wide-eyed. He visibly shudders and looks at Dean desperately and _flickers_, like a TV with bad reception, flickers and stutters.

Dean drops the pouch instantly.

"Okay," Pam says as Sam jerks and swears and runs his hands quickly over himself, as if to confirm he's still all here. "All right. I know what's going on. Sorry, boys, should've warned you that might happen. Sit, all you."

"Among other things, Sam's the most human ghost I've ever seen," she says once they're all comfortable and the evil ghost-repelling mojo bag has been taken far, far away. "You're more real, more _alive_, than any other ghost. And it's not just the whole talking to people and not having the typical ghostly powers, it's… you still feel things. Most ghosts sort of fade out, emotionally, until all they've got left is the stronger emotions like rage and envy. But you- if I couldn't walk right through you, Sam, I'd swear you were still a living person."

"Why am I special?" Sam asks plaintively. Pam sighs.

"I think it's how you died," she says. "There are rituals that can be carried out to preserve a person's soul as it's leaving their body, and forge a connection between that spirit and a living person. So the ghost remains here, exactly like a living person except _not_, until the connection dies."

"So someone… _killed_ my brother… to create their very pet ghost?" Dean asks slowly.

"Pretty much," she says. "Except he did something wrong when he tried to bind Sam. He couldn't break the connection between you boys, which proved stronger. So the bond transferred and you were bound to Dean instead."

Sam sighs and runs his hand over his face. "Great," he says. "So I'm stuck like this, what, for the rest of Dean's life?"

"I'll admit, it's not ideal," Pam tells him, a bit of a scolding edge to her voice. "But it's not my fault, or Dean's, or anyone's but the bastard who killed you. You're lucky the bond between you boys was so strong. If it hadn't been, you'd be just as stuck, only with your own murderer for company. "

Sam sends a panicky look at Dean and instantly backs down, switching to kicked puppy mode in a heartbeat.

Cas hasn't said a word this whole time, hadn't even really looked at them, just leaned against the railing and stared blankly at the Impala. After a moment he pushes away from the railing and heads inside, careful not to make eye contact with any of them.

Pam watches him go, then looks at the brothers and sighs. "You boys ever seen him with his shirt off?"

"Dean has," Sam says instantly. "I try not to."

"You ever see a scar, right there? Looks like something with really sharp teeth bit him." She tilts her head to the side and taps the hollow of her shoulder over her collarbone, right at the base of her neck. "It's old, pretty faded."

Dean thinks he knows where this is going. "Anna?" he asks, and Sam flinches.

"His father was a psychic," Pam says with a nod of confirmation. "He's the example, now. Don't try to bring the dead back, Pamela, didn't you hear about this one guy in Chicago, nearly killed his whole family."

"He's scared of me," Sam says. He sounds sad, dismayed, upset even.

"Sam isn't Anna," Dean protests. "He made it sound like she went nuts after only a couple weeks. Sam's been here twenty years and he's fine."

Pam sighs. "Look, it's obvious you boys are having issues. I'm just saying, don't be too harsh on him. He's got his reasons for whatever he did. You may not think they're good ones, but he does, and he's the one with the childhood trauma." She looks at Dean. "How would you feel if, a couple months after you got him back, Sam started turning into a monster right in front of you?"

Like the victim of the world's sickest, least funny joke ever. He doesn't even need to think about that one. He's had plenty of time to go over all the worst-case scenarios and all the _what ifs_ ever since Cas told them his story.

"I'm gonna go talk to him," Sam says after a moment, daring either of them to tell him not to. When they stay silent, he heads inside after Cas.

Dean stays on the porch and drinks his beer and says nothing and tries to think about even less.

* * *

Pam offers to let them stay the night but Cas is extremely uncomfortable with the idea; he doesn't say it, of course, but he might as well, and his unhappiness proves catching. Finally Dean calls it a night and says goodbye to Pam and takes one of her business cards, just in case, and packs the other two into the Impala and drives about an hour before getting a hotel room.

Back home, they find the explosion has been ruled an accident- gas line rupture, the reporter says, completely unpredictable and no one's fault, and Cas scoffs in disbelief but says nothing. He's still on medical leave, will be for another week, and stuck with desk duty for a while after that, and he hates it. The inactivity gets to Cas in a way it never has to Dean- Cas is just one of those people who always has to be _doing something_.

Dean bullies Cas into moving in with him at about day three. He's honestly scared for Cas- he's seen that desperate, lost look before, most often in the mirror, and Cas has access to addictive medications. Dean himself has issues like that- he isn't technically an alcoholic, but it's a very thin line, and he knows he's flirted with it before. So he stages a sort of pre-crisis intervention for Cas, who allows it with bemused tolerance.

It's kind of like one of those slow, building forms of torture, because Dean hasn't had sex with Cas since a day or two before the explosion, and now the guy is _always around_, so familiar and comforting and warm, and Dean absolutely sucks at keeping his hands to himself. But Cas is keeping his distance, and he certainly isn't going to be the one to swallow his pride and go crawling back to the lying liar who lies, so he stays away as well. Finally he goes out one night to get drunk and hook up, since the Cas-n-Dean show appears to be over, only to end up having to have Cas drag his plastered ass back home.

The following morning stars Dean whimpering at the kitchen table and flinching away from lights and noises and Cas aimlessly searching every cupboard with all the grace and brainpower of a zombie- he's looking for tea, like he does every morning, somehow never grasping that there is not and will never be tea because this is Dean's house and Real Americans Drink Coffee, Dammit- and Sam scowling in disapproval at them both like a disappointed father.

"You're pathetic," he says to Dean, and leaves to go ghost-stalk people he doesn't know, which Dean supposes means his statement was meant for all three of them.

* * *

The day Cas goes back to work, he moves back into his place. He leaves his meds at Dean's house- he stops and buys the giant five-hundred-count bottle of aspirin at the store, but he's staying away from the heavy stuff, so Dean says nothing about it. He wants to stop Cas, to ask him to stay, to apologize for begin a dick and hear Cas apologize for lying and have everything go back to how it was before, but he doesn't know how to begin. In the end, it's easier to just let Cas go, so that's what he does.

Sam is not amused by this.

"You have some sort of guilt complex, don't you?" he says the day Cas leaves. He's been following Dean around and bitching ever since Cas left, and none of the usual tricks to get him to go away are working. "You can't be happy because of me, because I can never truly be happy either, so at least this way we're miserable together."

"He was lying to us, Sam," Dean snaps, sticking to what he views as the most salient point.

"No, Dean, he was lying_ to me_!" Sam throws his arms up. He turns sharply away and paces a few steps, then comes back when he's calmer and speaks in a more controlled voice. "He was lying to me, Dean. You just happened to be in the room. He was lying to me and that makes it my problem and I am dealing with it. It has almost nothing to do with you."

Dean just looks at him. Finally Sam sighs in defeat.

"You know, you were right," he says. "You really don't deserve him."

It's what Dean's been saying from the start, but it still hurts, hearing it from his brother's mouth. He scowls and grumbles and walks away and this time Sam leaves him alone.

* * *

The problem is, for the first time in twenty years Sam has someone to talk to who isn't Dean, so this time their little battle of wills doesn't get called off the first time Sam starts feeling lonely. In fact, Sam starts spending more time with Cas than with Dean. Dean kinda feels sorry for the poor bastard, used as he is as a weapon in sibling warfare, even if he is, however indirectly, the root cause of all this drama.

This drags on for almost a month- and it's a little scary, how much of a stubborn bastard Sam can be- before Sam finally gives in. Or, more rather, approaches Dean with a compromise, but that's giving in in Dean's book.

"Talk to him," Sam says. "Just go to his place and talk to him. Make an honest effort and I'll leave this alone, I promise."

The prospect of a cease fire appeals- almost as much as the prospect of talking to Cas again, whom Dean is obstinately denying he misses so much it hurts- so Dean goes.

He's been to Cas' apartment about a half dozen times, if that. Calling it a hole in the wall is generous. Dean thinks the mayor's brother could afford better, could probably finagle himself some sweet setup if he really tried, but of course Cas didn't do that. He knocks on the door and Cas answers, looking genuinely surprised to see Dean, which answers the question of whether this is some sort of conspiracy.

"Hey," Dean says, shifting awkwardly. "Sam was harping at me to come talk to you, you know how it is." Except he doesn't, not really, because Cas may have a boatload of siblings to Dean's one but from what Dean's seen all of them put together probably don't care about Cas as much as Sam does Dean.

Cas nods once and steps aside, letting Dean in. He heads into the kitchen and Dean sits on the sofa and tries not to be too judgmental as he glances around. Cas is a contradiction, really, and Dean will never understand how such a compulsive neat freak could live in a dump.

Cas is in the kitchen a suspiciously long time, long enough that Dean starts thinking he's trying to avoid him. Finally he comes back out and hands Dean a cup of coffee. He stays on his feet, shifting uncomfortably. "Is something wrong with Sam?" he asks.

"No," Dean says. The coffee's tolerable enough that he takes a second sip. "No, he's just been watching a lot of daytime TV again. I remember this one time," and Dean smiles and lets out a soft amused laugh, "he was on this Judge Judy kick. One day I got home and he was ranting at the TV-" He stops there, his smile growing brittle. It's so new, so fragile a thing, to be able to talk about Sam like this. "Anyway, he told me to come talk to you or he'd be a pain in my ass for the rest of my life, so…" He kind of cringes as he hears the words coming out of his own mouth and takes another drink of the coffee, because there was probably no way on Earth to phrase that last bit any more insultingly than what he just said.

Fortunately Cas deals in hard facts, not insults and offences. "Sam told me to stop apologizing for lying to him," he says. "He says he forgives me." He looks confused by the concept, as if he can't figure why Sam would bother. Dean snorts.

"Kid doesn't know how to talk to actual people," he mutters, and it's true. Sam is still eight years old in some ways.

"I am sorry, Dean," Cas says, far too earnest for Dean to handle looking at him.

Dean almost laughs. Instead he shakes his head. Sam's right, he sees. It's not his fight. He takes another sip of the coffee, because it's good, then another, because it is good and it really shouldn't be, considering who made it. Cas won't even touch coffee; he certainly wouldn't have any of it in his home.

"You give up on tea, Cas?" Dean asks, and looks up just in time, because Cas actually blushes. It's one of the most awesome things Dean has ever seen; he would have bet money that Cas didn't even know how to blush, that he doesn't have a solid enough grasp on the concept of shame to bother.

"No," he says, indignant as he always is whenever Dean attacks his beverage choice, but can't seem to actually look at him. Dean considers this a moment, then gets up and heads into the kitchen.

Last time Dean had been to Cas' place, he hadn't had a coffeemaker in the kitchen. Hell, last time Dean had been to Cas' place he hadn't had a kitchen in the kitchen; it had been the room where the refrigerator was and not much else. Now, though, there's a very expensive-looking coffeemaker sitting on the counter, an equally expensive-looking bag of coffee sitting beside it.

Dean looks back at Cas, who has followed him into the kitchen and is close enough to touch. "You don't drink coffee," he says, pointing to the coffeemaker. Cas blinks.

"You do," he says, as if it's as simple as that. Maybe it is.

"Did Sam set you up to this?" Dean asks, suspicious, because Sam would do exactly that, and think he's helping to boot, and guilt-complex Cas would do whatever Sam told him.

"I got it a few days before the explosion," Cas says. "I thought…" And he stops, shakes his head and moves away, into the kitchen. The coffeemaker's empty box sits torn open, Styrofoam chunks scattered around the kitchen. He begins to clean up the mess, methodical mindless action.

"How long ago did you figure out Sam's not dangerous?" Dean asks, slowly puzzling the pieces together. He thinks he's getting to understand, right here, why he was so upset with Cas. it's easier when those blue eyes aren't watching him.

"A few weeks after we met," Cas says, not looking back at him. "Before your birthday."

"Huh." Dean looks down into the coffee. "But then… you kept coming around."

Cas gives him a quick glance, affection and exasperation warring for control. "Yes," he says simply.

"So you didn't…" He trails off. Cas doesn't take crap from anybody, not even the mayor, there's no way- but Dean keeps thinking of their first time together. Cas had been an enthusiastic participant in that encounter, true enough, but _Dean_ had initiated, _Dean_ had pushed Cas up against the door and kissed him, too fast and too hard to fight against. Dean's had sex that ended in a screaming match or an empty bed the following morning, sex he's regretted, but he's never- _never_- had any reason to think his partners were less than completely willing, at the time, to sleep with him, and it's killing him that Cas has put him in the position to doubt himself like this. Cas enjoyed it, there's no mistaking that, but if Dean hadn't started it…

"I didn't what?" Cas asks, carefully not as impatient as he probably wanted to be, dumping the Styrofoam back into the box and turning to look at Dean.

"You weren't just hanging around because of Sam," Dean finishes lamely, because somehow _you slept with me because you wanted to, right?_ seems a little too needy.

Cas' face shifts through a kaleidoscope of emotions, ranging from surprise to shock to hurt to understanding. He's a detective, Dean reminds himself, and a good one despite his social awkwardness. He hears what isn't said as much as what is.

"No, Dean," he says. "I was 'hanging around' because of you."

"You're the one who said no commitments," Dean says defensively, annoyed by the gentle understanding in Cas' tone. Cas goes carefully blank again.

"I was already lying to you about being able to see Sam," he says, back to picking at the little Styrofoam crumbs littering the counter. "I intended to tell you that night, but I couldn't. I was a coward."

Dean can't help but snort at that. "It's been a month, man," he argues. "We lived together for a week, you never once-" He can't find the words.

"Neither did you," Cas points out. "I didn't think you were interested in sex with me anymore."

"Shit," Dean mutters, because even after all this, it's still a shock how easily and well this man can lie to him. Cas was probably dying inside right along with Dean during that week, and he never once showed a hint of it. Then he says it again, because even after all this there will never be a day where he's not interested in sex with Cas anymore. Then he gets his lazy ass in gear and moves over to Cas and pulls him in for a kiss. Cas shudders and just melts against him, fingers digging into Dean's arms like he's afraid to let go. After a few moments he breaks away with a noise of irritation when Dean spills a little bit of coffee on him and takes the cup away and slides it onto the counter. Then he's back, and Dean takes a fistful of his shirt so he can't leave again.

"No more secrets, right?" he asks hoarsely. He's expecting a quick answer; instead Cas goes blank, focused inward, like he's examining every aspect of his life, looking for anything vaguely secret-like. Dean lets out a breathless laugh at nips at his chin, drawing him back out.

"I don't believe so," Cas says solemnly, and Dean figures he'll be presenting a list sometime soon, a recounting of the thousand little secrets every human keeps just because it's what they do.

"That's a good answer," Dean mutters against his lips, fingers busy working on the buttons on Cas' shirt. He gets it off and pauses, tracing his fingertips over the new scars on Cas' right side, the spiderweb from broken glass and surgery spread over his shoulder and upper arm. He slides his thumb just over the wing of Cas' collarbone, where there's the palest of thin lines marking an almost-perfect circle over the skin, far older than the rest of the scars. Cas catches his hand and pulls it gently away, then does some ninja move that has Dean swearing and staggering back until he hits the kitchen table. Then Cas is on him, all gentle, possessive aggression, clever fingers finding all the right spots and teeth nipping, and Dean just hangs on for the ride.

The table gets pushed it back until it fetches up against the wall as they kiss, Dean trying to get Cas' belt off without actually watching what he's doing. Cas has better luck and gets Dean's clothes off without any fuss. He disappears for a moment, leaving Dean bereft and giving him a chance to catch his breath, before returning with a small bottle of olive oil.

They're too old to be having sex against the kitchen table, Dean thinks, even as he jerks and gasps and pants against Cas' shoulder as Cas slides two fingers into him. There is going to be pain and bruising tomorrow, and not the good kind of pain and bruising. Then Cas removes his fingers and gently pushes his cock in and Dean stops caring about that, his legs coming up to wrap around Cas' waist, the table a steady supporting presence against the small of his back. Cas wraps an arm around him, hand between Dean's shoulder blades, and braces himself against the edge of the table with his free hand. They hesitate there, a single moment in time that seems to stretch on to forever; then Dean lifts his head off Cas' shoulder and buries his fingers in Cas' hair and pulls him in for a kiss, and Cas draws out to thrust back into him, hitting just the right angle. And then he does it again, before Dean's recovered from the first time, and again, and soon enough the only thing Dean cares about is making this moment last forever.

* * *

About the same time as Dean is convincing Cas of round two- in an actual bed, this time, as a bonus- a thousand miles away in a ratty hotel room just outside of the city of Baltimore, a man makes a phone call. Then he sits on the sofa- you couldn't pay him enough to even touch the bed, he _knows_ what people do in these rooms- and finishes off a bottle of Glenfiddich as he waits.

Eight minutes after he makes the call, he hears the first of the responding army pulling stealthily into the motel parking lot. He takes the cell phone he'd called with and smashes it with the heavy, empty glass bottle, then goes to the open window in the back and throws the remains of the phone as hard as he can. Then he goes back to the sofa.

When the police break down the door, all yells and raucous noise and far too many guns pointing in every direction, he greets them with a smile.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: I survived the weekend! Huzzah! I meant to have this up earlier today, but I was baking cookies instead. Apologies, and digital cookies for all.

Also, as a side note, this chapter introduces, and the next chapter continues, with a new theme- breaking away from one-person POV. Namely, we move away from Dean. Second to last chapter, boys and girls, then the epilogue, and the hundred-odd little ficlets this monster has spawned. I'll deal with those later.

* * *

Jo and Jess are doing their sisterhood thing in the shop when Dean gets there the next morning. For once, he doesn't beat a hasty retreat at the sight. Nothing is dragging him down today.

"Well, you're in a good mood," Jess says as Dean greets them. He's alone today, not that they see it, since his failing to go home last night means Sam hadn't been there this morning to come in with him. He shrugs and smiles and says nothing as he heads back behind the counter. Jo's on him in a heartbeat, of course.

"Did you and Cas make up?" she asks, leaning against the counter eagerly. Jess stands a reasonable distance away, at least pretending to have some common decency.

"Yup," Dean says, because he's damn proud of it. The kitchen table had been nice but the bed had been even nicer, Cas determined to prove that his interest in Dean has nothing whatsoever to do with anything but Dean. It's something different, now- like a brand new relationship with someone new and interesting, only with the added bonus of no secrets and no lies and both knowing what the other likes. Makeup sex has never been this good before.

"Oh, _finally_," Jo barks. She reaches over to punch him on the shoulder, a bit harder than absolutely necessary. "You're such a jerk. I don't know what he sees in you."

"Hey," Dean protests. "He's the one who screwed up, not me."

"What'd he do?" Jess asks, moving forward a little bit.

"He was lying to me," Dean says. Jo snorts.

"Well, then, you weren't paying any attention to him, 'cause Cas sucks at lying," she says.

"He's good enough at it when he needs to be," Dean replies, then glances at the door as a customer walks in. "Now order something or get out of the way."

She sticks her tongue out at him and returns with Jess to their table to huddle together and make wild speculations about his love life. In the background, the TV runs some news report about the capture of some elusive serial killer up in Baltimore; Dean takes the customer's order and throws coffee beans at Jess until she gets the hint and changes the channel. Jo pegs one of the beans back at Dean and it hits his shoulder hard enough to bruise, and that probably would have been the beginning of a very ugly war if a group of teenagers hadn't chosen that moment to move into the line of fire.

* * *

Cas comes in during the lunch rush and Dean knows something's wrong just by the look of him, pale and almost scared and antsy, shifting and shuffling his feet and looking very impatient with the crowd. He shakes his head when Dean offers to take a minute for him and says, quite ominously, "This will take longer than that."

Dean makes time for him.

"I said last night that I had no more secrets," Cas says a few minutes later, outside in the parking lot and well away from any prying eyes. Dean watches him warily, not liking where this is going. For several long moments Cas seems unable to find the words. Finally he turns and heads over to his car. "I don't, but my family does." He gets a newspaper out of the backseat and unfolds it to the front page.

The headline blares 'Devil Captured In Baltimore', and the majority of the page is taken up by a mugshot of a smirking man. Dean thinks he might look a little familiar but doesn't want to take the time to figure it out himself.

"Who is he?" he asks.

"My brother, Nick." Cas looks at the paper again, studying the picture. For a moment Dean simply can't process that.

"Your- the one who was driving when Anna…?" he asks.

"Yes."

"You're sure? I mean, you where how old last time you saw him?" he scoffs half-heartedly, desperately looking for a solution that doesn't involve Cas being related to a killer. Cas gives him a brief, dour look. Then he pulls a glossy eight-by-ten out of the newspaper- clearly he was expecting this- and held it up next to the paper. It's a picture of Michael.

The devil has blond hair and achingly familiar blue eyes and a smile that sends shivers down the spine even when mangled and pixelated by printers, but there's no mistaking it. Those two men are brothers, no doubt about it.

"All right," Dean says, rubbing his hand over his chin. "All right. So your brother's a psycho serial killer. Let's face it, Cas, the way your family is, that's not too big a surprise."

Cas sticks Michael's photo back in the paper and moves away from Dean, shaking with pent-up adrenalin. Dean reads the article over. He's been hearing about this guy for months now, he realizes as he reads, hearing about the trail of bodies he leaves as he bounces from state to state, never attracting enough attention to be of national interest but still racking up quite a body count.

"Says here they haven't ID'ed him," he says. He looks up at Cas. "The cops have no idea who he is?"

"How could they?" Cas counters. "He abandoned his name and his family twenty-four years ago. He was never arrested while he was with us. They have nothing to compare to him now, no way to link him to his real identity." Except for a driver's license and an accident report twenty-five years old, Dean thinks, about a seventeen-year-old kid who hit a patch of ice and slid out of control. He hadn't even been too badly hurt in the accident, if Dean understands correctly.

"You have to tell them," Dean says. He doesn't know why it matters, but it does.

"I intend to," Cas says, then glances around. "But Michael…"

But Michael, indeed. Theirs is a surprisingly conservative country, where politicians regularly lose everything because of affairs and garbled words and misunderstandings; he doesn't know what being related to a serial killer will do to Michael's career, but considering his job is based solely on the public's opinion of him, it's fairly safe to say he's screwed.

"Yeah, sucks to be him," Dean says, and can't quite help the vindictive little laugh he gives, because he's an asshole like that and Michael damn well deserves it anyways.

Cas just looks at him, and Dean knows the day's surprises aren't done yet.

"I believe Michael knew Nick was out there killing people," he says. "They may even have been in communication, in a way. Nick was always taunting him, trying to get him angry…"

"You think your brother is killing people in order to play mind games with his twin?" Dean demands. Cas gives him a flat look and he waves it off. "Yeah, I know, your family, not a big surprise."

"Serial killers often crave attention. They want an audience." Cas sets his jaw, eyes dark. "I believe Michael has known for some time that Nick is a killer and done nothing about it, because of the impact it would have on his career."

"You think those two are in contact?" Dean asks. "Like, what, Nick kills somebody and dials up Mikey and says 'hey, I'm in Vegas and I just gutted a guy, thought you might wanna know'?"

"Not that directly, but yes." Cas' eyes glaze over a little as he gazes out over the parking lot into nothing. "It's a game to Nick. He's a sociopath. He doesn't care about anything. And Michael told me once that he is keeping tabs on Nick's whereabouts." Some shred of dark humor slips into Cas' tone, twists his lips into a smirk. "He said it was easy, once one knew the trick of it."

Dean abruptly remembers their weekend at Bobby's, the news report of the killer in Texas that had gotten away, and thinks yeah, it would be easy enough to keep track of him.

"Michael has pulled several of our older case files," Cas is saying. "And he's had our DA ask some of the cities Nick has been in to send over what they've got. Discreetly, of course. I've seen the files in his house. I think this is how Michael knows about Sam," Cas finishes, and everything just screeches to a halt because _hold it the fuck right there_, since when is Sam a part of this whole train wreck?

"What about Sam?" he asks carefully, and Cas visibly braces himself.

"The man who killed Sam performed the same binding ritual as my father attempted on Anna, only he succeeded," he says. "That specific ritual is complicated and powerful, Dean, and probably only a handful of people the world over know the spell. My father got it out of a grimoire- a spellbook. I don't know what happened to it after Anna, but it wasn't in his possessions when he died. I thought Michael did something with it." He sighs tiredly, pressing two fingers against his right temple in classic getting-a-headache position. "It seems Nick took it instead."

"You think he killed Sam?" Dean demands harshly, holding up the paper and turning it so Cas can see the picture.

"You said no more secrets," Cas defends, which means yes. Son of a bitch.

Dean throws the paper away from him as though it had burned him and turns away from Cas. He paces back and forth, mindlessly covering ground as he tries to fit this new information into his world view. Because Cas isn't to blame for his brother's actions- not to mention he'd only been thirteen at the time of Sam's death and hadn't seen Nick in four years- but _his brother_ had killed Sam.

"Why the hell didn't you mention this earlier, Cas?" he growls.

"Because the completion of the ritual involved killing a child, and I never thought my brother would do such a thing," Cas says, and Dean turns back at his tone. "I didn't know that he is a monster." He says it too calmly, too smoothly, and Dean swears to himself and offers a silent apology to Sam, who may be his brother but is not currently watching his entire fucking world come crashing down. Then he goes over to Cas and pulls him into a quick, rough hug, and feels the tension in him dissipate. Not his fault, he tells himself, not his fault, not his fault, not his fault. And he'd come to Dean; scared and confused and betrayed and he'd come to Dean to help make it all better. That means something- everything- right now.

"I have a picture," Cas says a bit later. He sounds better- rougher, but not nearly as blank, and so better. "Of the family, when I was young. Just before Anna died. Sam can look at it, if he wants."

"What was he like back then?" Dean asks. Cas considers this a long moment.

"He was friendly. Charming. Everybody liked him, but…" He shakes his head. "He scared us, and none of us could really say why."

Well, duh. Sociopath. Some kids have good instincts for that sort of _wrongness_.

Dean sighs and leans back against Cas' car and just lets it all sink in. "So what are you gonna do?" he asks finally. "Just call up the cops in Baltimore and say hey, I know who he is?"

"I intend to go to Baltimore," Cas says. "I want to talk to him."

"Will they let you?" Dean demands incredulously. Cas just looks at him, a long flat uncomprehending look, like the idea they might not let him talk to their prisoner is so ludicrous it's not even worth considering. "Sorry," he says, not knowing why he's apologizing but knowing that, for whatever reason, he ought to.

"Michael won't like it," Cas says.

"Tough shit," Dean counters instantly. "Not like he can stop you." Then he pauses, because it _is_ like he can stop Cas, and it's not outside the realm of possibility, considering this family already has one sociopathic monster in its ranks. "He's not going to try to stop you, right?" he asks warily.

"No," Cas says. "The similarity is too obvious. Someone else will make the connection. His career is over, no matter what he does about it. He would only be delaying the inevitable."

"Yeah," Dean agrees. "And you know what's really fucked up? That you said no, killing you won't solve the problem, not no, Michael wouldn't kill his own brother."

"Of course he wouldn't," Cas replies far too calmly. "He's the mayor. He has someone on staff that would do it for him."

Either he's got the driest, most deadpan sense of humor Dean has ever encountered, or he just doesn't see how sad all this is. Dean errs on the side of caution and leaves it alone.

"What about Sam?" he asks. "How're you gonna tell him about this?" He looks at Cas, meets that intense blue gaze, sees the desperation and the hope, and goes _ah-ha_. "Right. That's my job."

"I need to talk to the Baltimore DA," Cas says.

"You can just call him up? It's really that easy?" Dean asks.

"The Chicago DA owes Michael a favor," Cas replies calmly. "She'll help if I say it's for him." Dean smirks.

"Why you sneaky little bastard," he says approvingly, then kisses him, just because he can.

* * *

Sam takes it better than Dean would've thought.

He turns white and stares wide-eyed at the picture Cas had given Dean to show him, but he doesn't disappear or run off, and his voice is steady as he says, "That's him. That's him. Oh, man, Cas' _brother_?"

"Yeah," Dean says, glancing over to where Cas is pacing about. He's on hold, stuck waiting for the eternally slow wheels of bureaucracy to grind away. Sam looks over and sets his jaw and swallows hard but says nothing. He and Cas are friends in a way Dean can't even begin to comprehend. They'll figure this out on their own, as they have the other big issues, and Dean knows enough to know that, in trying to help, Dean would only get in the way.

"What's he doing?" Sam asks. His hands are shaking, but when he catches Dean watching them, he curls them into fists and slides them into his pockets.

"He's trying to clear it with the Baltimore DA so he can go talk to his brother," Dean says on a sigh. Something shifts in Sam's face, his brows drawing together, and for one horrible second Dean thinks his brother is about to cry, which Dean is not and will never be prepared to handle.

Instead he says, loud enough for Cas to hear, "You don't have to do that, Cas."

Cas looks at them, then wanders over and traces a finger over the picture. It's a sad thing, Dean thinks, since he can look at it and count off the people- Anna, a red-haired girl with a sweet smile, dead; Gabriel, a short blond with a sarcastic smile, leaning heavily on Anna's shoulder, missing; Nick and Michael, opposite sides of the same coin, standing with the other kids between them, Michael with a thousand-yard stare and Nick with a menacing sort of smirk; and their father, a slight, scraggly-looking man who is, as near as Dean can tell, wearing a bathrobe in the picture. And Cas, of course, who came out of that nightmare pretty screwed up himself and still manages to be, sadly enough, the healthiest of the bunch.

"Yes, I do," he says. He looks up at the brothers with a sad smile. "With all due respect, Sam, this isn't about you."

"Lovely family you've got here," Dean says, gesturing with the picture before tossing it onto the table. Cas looks away and Dean instantly feels like a jerk, which is compounded by the scolding bitchface he gets from Sam.

"Do me a favor, if you do talk to him," Sam says, and Cas looks up at him questioningly. "Ask him why."

Cas nods once and starts to answer but the hold music suddenly ends and they can hear someone talking to Cas. He moves away as he answers, and Dean sighs and scrubs his hands over his face and regards Sam.

"Every time I think we've hit bottom, it gets weirder," he says wryly.

"Yeah," Sam agrees, trying for humor, trying to put aside all the heavy crap. "All this, because you thought this guy has a nice ass."

"I never said that," Dean snaps instantly. Really, Cas' ass had been the fifth, possibly even the sixth, thing he'd noticed.

"No, but you stare, _a lot_," Sam says, nose wrinkling, because he is a prude.

Dean can't really argue with that- that had been one of the best things about Cas, in the days before they were sleeping together, that he could stare at Cas all day long and the guy would think absolutely nothing of it, would even stare back. Dean had always thought eye-sex was the product of the over-romantic female imagination until he'd met Cas.

"You seem cool with this," he says, trying to derail this conversational train before it reaches its inevitable conclusion, complete with Sam's unbearably smug _I told you so_ face. He jerks a thumb to indicate the picture, and all it implies, as he talks. Sam shrugs.

"I'm a ghost, Dean," he says. "I'm pretty good with the weird." He glances at Cas. "You didn't come home last night," he says, knowing full well what Dean's trying to do and stubbornly clinging to the original topic.

"Sorry, Dad," Dean drawls. "Didn't know you were waiting up for me."

"I'm happy for you, Dean," Sam says, gentle and far too earnest. "For both of you."

"Oh, god, don't even start," Dean mutters. He ducks past Cas and into the kitchen to get himself some coffee- he'd brought the coffeemaker over from Cas' place. As he does so, Cas hangs up and sighs.

"She'll call me back tomorrow," he reports. "The case is a federal one, but he's in the custody of Baltimore PD until they transfer him."

"Which means?" Dean prompts.

"Which means calling the DA will still work," Sam translates. "If he's in Baltimore's custody, he's their case, their problem, and the local DA decides who gets to see him. If he's in the FBI's custody…"

"They won't even talk to me," Cas finishes. "Especially if they hear Nick and I are related."

"Great," Dean says. "Now what?"

"Now we wait," Cas says. He sends a single, lightning-fast glance towards Sam, then ducks past both of them and disappears down the hallway.

"Is he honestly feeling guilty because his brother's a psycho?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, Dean, he is, and you know what? I can kind of relate." Sam groans and runs his hand through his hair. "We'll sort it out after this is over. You just… go. He needs you."

Dean goes, because he feels like he's handling this whole thing kind of badly, and it means getting away from Sam. He finds Cas sitting on the edge of his bed, the family picture in his lap. He starts shaking as Dean sits down next to him but says nothing, just leaning into him. That he can find no tears to shed for the whole giant clusterfuck that is his life is the saddest part of it all, Dean thinks.

Twenty minutes later he breaks out the alcohol, and they start drinking and don't stop until the pain fades away into the grey haze of unconsciousness.

* * *

Detective Diana Ballard isn't sure what you get for capturing the devil. Notoriety, definitely, and she's already working on finagling a raise- best to get something out of this whole mess. But other than that, she can't really think of anything except the nightmares.

She's seen some seriously twisted specimens of humanity before, but this thing isn't even human. It's something _else_ wearing a human skin.

The devil seems content, so far, to entertain himself with a rousing game of thoroughly-creep-out-the-lady-detective, with a few rounds of piss-off-the-federal-agents for some variety. He's a handsome man, with sleepy blue eyes and thick blond hair and a little boy's charming smile. Her partner and the feds get a lazy, half-hearted sort of glare, but she gets the devil's smile when she walks in, the man all puppyish eagerness.

He recited Dante's Inferno in Italian to her partner and serenaded the feds with Stairway to Heaven twenty-seven times. To Diana, he narrates his kills, sparing no detail save names, dates, and locations. Twice she'd asked him to hold on for a minute and walked out into the hallway and thrown up in the trash can conveniently located not even twenty steps away.

The feds call in a profiler, who spends four hours with the devil and has to be almost literally dragged out of the room because this is the sort of thing that can make his career. He seems a little bit too excited as he explains the devil's various, numerous, issues, all of which amounts to the guy being just pure evil, as far as Diana's concerned.

The day before he's set to be transferred to a federal prison, because they're getting nothing useful out of him and probably never will, he gets a visitor.

"DA already approved it," Agent Harding, lead FBI agent on the case, says irritably. "It's a detective from Kansas City. Says he has information on Captain Crazy in there and he'll give it to us after he gets five minutes with him."

"Is he for real?" Diana asks. She's been let into the big boys' club on a probationary basis because she's the devil's favorite. It's not the best way to be kept in the loop, but if she's going to have those images swimming around in her head for the rest of her life, she's damn well going to get some appreciation for it.

"Don't know," Harding says with a shrug. He's pissed and he's showing it- since the devil is still, technically, in Baltimore PD custody, the FBI doesn't get to say no.

Harding hits the door to the captain's office like a tornado, slamming into the room beyond with the very obvious intent to startle its occupants. Diana slides in behind him and watches as the man waiting for them looks casually up at the agent, looking very not-startled. She almost wants to congratulate him- Harding's been a pain in her ass for three days now.

"Just so you're aware," Harding says, as the Kansas City detective rises to his feet, "this is not a petting zoo, Detective Milton. If you go in there, you had better come out with something worthwhile, or you'll be lucky if the demotions stop at beat cop."

To his credit, Milton doesn't so much as bat an eye. In fact, he gives Harding a flat sort of look, then turns his gaze to Diana, who feels her breath catch in her throat. He moves past them both without a word and heads down the hallway.

Diana heads into the observation room. Harding follows, scoffing and muttering. He doesn't think the detective will get anything, she knows. She thinks he will. She's been staring at those same blue-as-sin eyes for days.

The devil has his heels on the table and his chair tipped back and balanced carefully on one leg; when the door opens he rolls his head over to look and nearly tips himself over backwards. The chair thuds forward and lands heavily, the devil hitting the table and sending it skittering away a few feet. Harding stops muttering instantly- it's the first time since they stormed the motel that the man appeared something other than in total control.

"Well," he says, as the detective gently closes the door behind him. "Well, well, well. Look who grew up pretty."

Milton says nothing, merely considers the older man with a sharp blue gaze. The devil allows the scrutiny with silence.

Finally, when the detective moves over to the table, the devil gives a heavy sigh. "How long has it been, Castiel? Twenty-five years?"

"Son of a bitch," Harding says, finally cluing in. "Son of a bitch, they're related."

"Almost," Castiel says to the devil. He takes the other chair and moves it as though he's going to sit down, but he stays on his feet. He's afraid of the man in front of him, Diana can see, a mindless animal fear, the sort that takes years to take root. A childhood fear.

"Does Michael know you're here?" the devil continues. "I imagine he must. He doesn't let much slip past him. This will destroy his career, you know." He smiles brightly at the thought. "Public opinion is such a fickle mistress."

"That's why you did this, isn't it?" Castiel asks, and the devil tilts his head to the side and smiles up at his- brother, most likely, with those eyes.

"I am an artist, Castiel," he says, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture. "I need accolade. I got tired of putting my career on hold out of respect for Michael's." He smirks, folds his hands together demurely in his lap and leans back in the chair. "Besides, I wanted to see if he'd do the right thing, but you didn't give him the chance, did you?"

The detective says nothing, merely studies the devil steadily. He's tense but not coiled, on edge but not jumpy. Diana finds herself liking him despite herself, even though he's said not a single word to her.

"Why are you here, Castiel?" the devil asks, genuinely curious, head tilted again. "It's not just to chat. You weren't the social type when we were children, and you don't appear to have grown into it."

Castiel reaches into a pocket and produces a small, worn photograph. He holds it out, admirably doesn't flinch when the devil's fingers brush against his as he takes it. The older man smiles at the picture, a soft fond smile.

"I remember him," he says softly. "Not his name, but him."

"You killed him," Castiel says, a matter of fact statement rather than an accusation. Harding flinches but stays put. The devil had refused all attempts to saddle him with an attorney, talking freely- to Diana, at least- about his crimes. There is nothing illegal in the detective's words, nothing that could throw a wrench in the works of any trial. Not that there will be a trial, at this rate. The devil seems perfectly happy to own up to anything they want to charge him for, from murder to jaywalking to the assassination of Julius Caesar, if someone felt like accusing him of it. He will most likely accept whatever sentence the DA hands him without contest.

"Yes," the devil says simply.

"Why?" Castiel asks, and there is a lot of weight behind that question.

"I wanted a friend," the devil says, tracing a fingertip over the picture. "I was young, inexperienced. Foolish. I thought it was as simple as following the instructions, one-two-three." He smiles again, something soft and wistful in his eyes, and for a moment he looks almost human. He would have been a heartbreaker when he was younger, Diana thinks abruptly. He still is, when he forgets he's supposed to be some creepy terrifying thing.

"What's he talking about?" Harding demands, and Diana can only shake her head.

"I underestimated the strength of his connection to his brother," the devil continues. "I didn't know it mattered." He puts the picture on the table and slides it over, and Castiel waits to pick it up until his hands are back on his side of the table. "Live and learn, I suppose."

Castiel says nothing. He turns and heads for the door.

"I chose him because he reminded me of you," the devil calls after him.

Castiel freezes halfway out the door. Then he keeps going without a single glance back. Diana turns and goes out into the hallway and almost runs smack into Castiel. Harding heads past both of them to duck into interrogation, slowing only to give the other man a sour look, as if he's upset Castiel got the devil to talk.

"So who is he?" Diana asks. Castiel sighs and looks away briefly, and it's so creepy to see those same eyes in a completely different face. There are similarities there, she can see, but they're overshadowed by how very different the two men themselves are. Castiel doesn't smile and the devil practically never stops; Castiel is intense and focused where the devil is sleepy eyes and wandering glances.

"Nick. Nicholas Milton. My brother." He glances back as Harding comes back out of interrogation, shepherded out by the sounds of round twenty-eight of Zep's infamous stairway. Castiel frowns a bit. "Why is he singing?" he asks Harding.

"Because he's completely insane," Harding says, mockingly sincere. "He's who again?"

Castiel gives Harding a withering look that would have had lesser men running for cover. "Nicholas Milton," he says again. Harding nods and pulls his phone out of his pocket.

"Thank you for your assistance, Detective," he says. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to make a call."

Diana scoffs as he walks away. "Feds," she snorts. Then she looks at Castiel and softens- he has the same look on his face she's seen every time she looked in the mirror ever since the devil chose her as the one he wanted to talk to. "You look like you need a drink," she says, because she sure as hell knows she does.

"I-" He pauses, blinks in surprise. "I could use a drink," he says, sounding unsure even as he says it.

Rather than hit a bar, Diana sneaks him down into Autopsy, where the assistant ME keeps a bottle of Stoli stashed to help make the bad days run a little smoother. She uses specimen cups as glasses after a quick inspection to make sure they're clean and pours him a healthy amount.

"Brother, huh?" she says as he drains his glass. "Must keep life interesting."

"That has never been a problem," he replies dryly.

She's just given him his third serving when his phone rings; he glances at the number and something softens in his face and he almost smiles. He's a handsome man, Diana sees, under the stress and the exhaustion he carries around like a tangible burden.

"Yes?" he answers. A second later confusion clouds his eyes, his brows drawing in. "Jess? What-?" Long pause. He goes from confused and slightly worried to completely blank as Jess talks, pulling on a poker face better than any Diana's seen before. She pushes her chair back and accesses the autopsy lab's computer, exiting the department's mainframe and pulling up a browser to check flight times back to Kansas City.

"Did you actually see something happen?" Castiel asks. After a moment he says, "No, don't call them. They won't do anything for two days at least." He leans over Diana's shoulder and taps a finger on the screen at the first flight available. It leaves in an hour and twenty minutes. "Close the shop. I'm changing my flight, I'll be there soon."

"Problem?" Diana asks pointlessly as he hangs up.

"I need to get home," he says, which is fairly obvious, but she had asked a fairly obvious question.

"I'll get someone to drive you," she says, and he's gone back upstairs before she manages to pick up the phone.

* * *

In retrospect, he should have realized _something_ was wrong with her when he saw her wearing a leather jacket. It's late July, and July in Kansas is kind of like July in the Sahara, only with a thousand percent more humidity. Dean won't even wear a shirt, if he can get away with it, never mind wander around in a leather jacket. But she's pretty, and has a smoky-sleepy voice that is absolutely perfect for her deadpan sarcasm, and she smiles up at Dean through her lashes, and he's a _guy_, okay? Guys do things for hot girls, even when they know there's less than zero chance of scoring. That's just how they're programmed.

So when, after two coffees and twenty minutes of snarking at everything, the hot girl asks if Dean knows anything about cars, he's doesn't spare much thought as to her unusual wardrobe. He certainly doesn't think the hot girl will jab him in the neck with a hypodermic when he slides into the driver's seat to try starting the car and shove him over and drive off while he's unconscious in the passenger's seat. But this is, apparently, what happens.

He wakes up tied to a chair, which is not a good sign.

"-wake up. Dean? You awake?" Sam asks from somewhere nearby. Dean grunts and shakes his head like a dog chasing away flies.

"Wussat?" he says in reply, lifting his head a little- he's been drooling on his shirt, very attractive- and looking around. He's in the kitchen of some big and new-looking house. "Wut happ'd?"

"Oh, thank god," his brother says, and Dean looks over to see two Sams kneeling next to his chair. They slowly condense into just one, though, which is good. Dean can't handle double the Sam-drama in his life.

"Sam," Dean grates out. "What happened?"

"The girl from the coffee shop kidnapped you," Sam tells him, effortlessly sliding into exasperated now that Dean's awake and worry has been reduced to second place. Dean cringes at the word 'kidnapped'.

"Okay," he mutters, rolling his head and listening to his spine pop in his neck. "Why?"

"She's pissed," Sam says, as if that isn't glaringly obvious. Then he says, "Dean…"

"I'm about to die, right?" Dean asks, forcing lightness and humor into his tone. He's going to die and Sam can do nothing but stand there and watch.

"I can't tell," Sam says, frustrated and helpless. "Pam said I might not be able to, since you're the one I'm bound to."

"Great," Dean says. Cas is gonna be pissed, he thinks- the one day he isn't in town to play protective cop boyfriend is the- is the one day-

"She works for Michael," Dean says suddenly. Sam looks at him in confusion. "Michael or the other one. This is about them, goddammit, is _everything_ about them these days?"

"The other one?" the girl echoes, suddenly appearing in the doorway. "The _other one_? He has a name, you know."

"Guess we know who she works for," Sam says wryly as she stalks over. Dean smiles at her.

"So, what? Your boss gets arrested, you're out of a job, so you start kidnapping people for kicks?" he asks. She scoffs.

"He called the cops himself," she tells him. "He does that, sometimes, when he's getting bored with life. To remind himself that it could be worse."

"Oh, god," Dean says, looking at her. "You're some sort of serial killer groupie, aren't you?"

She slaps him. She's wearing a ring, so the blow splits his lower lip; he licks at the blood and spits it at her. That time she punches him, right in the solar plexus, and he takes a few minutes to recover from that. As he's gasping wildly for air, she ruffles his hair and moves away.

"I'm nobody's groupie," she says. Dean just kind of wheezes. "I'm not his assistant and I'm not his number one fan or any of that crap."

"Well, you're not his partner," Dean pants out. "And bad news, sweetheart, but if you're his girlfriend? He doesn't love you."

She moves quickly, he sees it out of the corner of his eye. Sam makes a single sound of warning before brilliant, white-hot pain scores along Dean's arm. This is not the blunt-edged pain that comes with a blow; this is sharp and cutting. He groans through his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut and rides out the initial wave, then looks over at her. She's got a kitchen knife, one of the really big ones.

"Okay, so," Dean says. "You're his apprentice."

She grins and laughs, digging the tip of the knife under his chin. "You are pretty, I have to give you that," she says, petting her free hand down his chest. "He's got good taste."

"What do you want?" Dean asks firmly, trying not to tip his head up, because that would just be exposing his throat to her.

"What do I want?" she echoes. "I want Nick back. I don't think you can give me that, though."

"Nope, sorry. Guess you gotta let me go." Dean smirks at her. She circles around him and leans against his back, tracing her fingers along his neck.

"You know, Michael's got no one," she says. "And soon enough, he won't have anything else, either. Even Nick can't find Gabriel- and believe me, we've looked- so pretty little Castiel is all that's left. And all he has, is you."

Dean swallows and feels her fingertips trace the motion. "They didn't do anything to you. Hell, Michael's gonna lose everything he has because Cas is gonna tell the world he's related to a psycho killer so _why the hell_ are you punishing him for doing what you want?"

She shrugs and pushes away from him, moving back around in front and tracing the knife down his sternum. "I'm just doing what I was told," she says, and digs the knife in as she follows the curve of his bottom rib.

On the other side of the room Sam stands in helpless, agonizing rage, fists clenched and jaw tight and eyes wide. Dean meets his gaze and holds it as the knife digs in deeper and twists, because this is only just starting, and Sam is the only anchor he has.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Almost done, people. Last real chapter. As previously stated, there is an epilogue of sorts that will be up sometime next week. I don't know exactly when, what with Christmas and all.

Happy holidays to all you wonderful people.

* * *

Sam doesn't remember pain.

He figures if he tried, really hard, he could scrounge up some memory of it- he broke his arm when he was five, and he's pretty sure that had to hurt- but he's never bothered before now. No pain is one of the few blessings of his current state of existence.

Sometimes he remembers, entirely without meaning to, a soft voice crooning ancient, arcane words to him as white-hot agony catches fire in his heart and spreads through his veins. It's all he has of his killer, that memory and a name and someone else's family photo and his killer's brother as his only not-Dean friend.

Now, though- now Sam is learning that he doesn't feel pain, but it is still perfectly possible to torture him.

The girl hums a nameless tune as she rolls the knife in her hand, using the very tip to put the finishing touches on some arcane symbol she'd carved onto Dean's chest, something fist-sized and complicated just over his heart. Dean blinks and rolls his head so he can look at it. He's pretty out of it. The girl had stabbed him low in the left side, just under his ribs, placing the knife so very carefully before driving it in so she wouldn't damage any internal organs, and every time he gets too mouthy- which is often, since this is Dean- she punches him there to shut him up.

"Is that a sun?" Dean asks. "Is that a- oh god, please tell me you didn't draw a smiley-face sun on me."

She pats him on the cheek and returns to the counter, where she'd laid out every sharp-edged knife in the kitchen. She puts down the small paring knife she'd been using for the detail work on her little drawing and looks around. She's done that a few times now, Sam thinks abstractly as he kneels beside his brother, looked around like she thought she'd heard something, like she's looking for something-

-or someone.

And then it hits him.

She knows about Sam. She knows Sam is here, watching, helpless, unable to do a single damn thing to save his brother's life. She's doing this _because _of Sam.

Something crystalizes within Sam, something cold and hard and burning bright, and every light in the house flickers. The windows flex outward, glass trembling in its panes. Sam stands up and curls his hands into fists and watches as the girl smiles to herself and picks up her next knife.

"We're not done yet?" Dean asks plaintively, a little more aware now after his brief break. He'd be better off without that bravado, Sam thinks, since it's only provoking her, but he hasn't the heart to say it. Dean's not putting on a front for anyone's sake but his own. Sam honestly doesn't think Dean would've lasted this long if he hadn't had to act the tough guy in front of his little brother.

"Oh, sugar, we're just getting started," she says, and presses the knife against his collarbone. Dean smiles at her, then twists around lightning-fast and bites her wrist; she yelps and jerks away. Then she scowls furiously and brings up one foot and slams her heel into the wound in Dean's side.

Sam's world goes white.

The lights and windows explode, showering the room in broken glass. The girl ducks instantly but she's tiny and fragile, a living being that is nothing next to the rage of the dead. He picks her up with ease- even if he were alive he could do that, for he's a big man and she's a small woman- and slams her against the wall once, twice, then holds her there, his hand wrapped around her throat. She struggles, tries to kick him but he doesn't feel it. She drops the knife and curses and wraps both hands around his wrist, trying to pull him off.

"_Sam_!" Dean yells from somewhere through the burning white rage. Sam glances over- he can feel her death coming, that weird indescribable tickle of knowledge that she is soon to die growing rapidly- and looks at his brother.

His brother, who is cut up and bleeding and staring at him with wide eyes. He has nothing to be afraid of, Sam thinks. He would never hurt his own brother.

Then he remembers Cas, and realizes with a sickening lurch that he will. He will hurt his own brother soon enough if he stays on this path. Anna did.

The girl hits the ground, choking and coughing, hands protectively over her throat. She staggers to her feet and lurches out. A moment later Sam hears the sound of her car start. He feels hollow, empty without that rage. He wants it back, and he never wants it again.

He remembers Cas on Dean's birthday- _I don't think you're dangerous anymore_. He'd been talking to Sam that night. Something had changed then, something Sam hadn't noticed until he knew to look for it. He doesn't want to destroy that. He doesn't want Cas to be afraid of him.

"Dean," he says, and the word jars him into motion. He rushes over to his brother and kneels next to him again. Dean lifts his head and smiles.

"That was awesome," he says. "Never do it again."

"I won't, I promise," Sam mutters. It's not a smiley-face sun, he notices abstractly, his mind focusing on the small details in order to ignore the basic fact. Dean is bleeding to death right in front of him and there's nothing he can do about it.

"You need to go," Dean tells him. "Go find someone who can help. Gotta be more than one person in this city who can see ghosts."

"No," Sam counters instantly. "She might not be gone for long. I'm not leaving."

"Sam," Dean says. "Go, please."

Sam doesn't want to, but whatever ghost powers he'd managed to pull out of his hat are gone now. That boiling, consuming rage has fled, dissipating like fog in the sunshine in the face of Dean's pain, the thought of Cas' fear. And Dean's right- he's useless here.

"I'll find someone," Sam says fiercely, causing Dean to give him a sad, proud smile, before he turns and heads out. He doesn't look back. If he did, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to leave.

* * *

It's a four-hour flight from Baltimore to Kansas City, even without factoring in such things as delays and security and the nightmarish parking the KC airport boasts. All told, it takes almost six hours to get home after he gets the call, and it's the worst six hours of Castiel's life.

It's almost eleven in the evening by the time he finally makes it to the shop, where Jess is waiting anxiously. She sees him arrive and has the door open by the time he reaches it.

"He went out to help this girl with her car and didn't come back," she says as he follows her in. "I thought it was normal, at first, because he does just take off like that, you know? Then I saw his car was still here." She points to the Impala's key chain, left on the counter in the back room along with Dean's cell phone. "He drives that car everywhere," Jess tells him, as though he didn't already know. "I'm pretty sure he drives it the hundred feet to get his mail."

Cas takes the keys and the phone and heads outside. "Did you see what car she was driving?" he asks.

"No, sorry. She was kind of a bitch, and I got tired of her picking at everything, so I went in the back."

"Was there anything memorable about her at all?" Cas looks up. "Besides her being a 'bitch'."

"She was wearing a leather jacket," Jess offers after a long moment. It's weak and she knows it.

"There are no security cameras anywhere around here?" he asks, looking uselessly around.

"No," Jess says, sounding as though she's about to cry. "You said don't call the cops, why not?"

"As you said, Dean has a reputation for flightiness," Cas replies. "Unless you have solid proof to indicate foul play- _solid_ proof, not just the car," he adds as she starts to protest, "then they will assume he's simply taken off again. You would be wasting your time and theirs."

"Well, I happen to think Dean's life is worth wasting a little bit of time," Jess snaps. Cas looks at her, her defensive posture with her arms folded tight over her chest and her shoulders hunched up.

"You already called them," he hazards, and she blinks.

"How did you-? Never mind. You were right, they just laughed at me." She groans and puts her hands on her hips. "What do we do, Cas?"

"I need to go speak to my brother," Cas says. "You have the harder job."

"What's that?"

"Nothing," he says to her, coming over so he's close enough to touch. "Go home and wait. I'll let you know when I find something."

She blows her breath out and looks away, studying the Impala's long sleek lines. After a moment she looks back at him and challenges, "Which brother? I've been watching the news, you know, and they're saying some interesting things about that serial killer in Baltimore-"

Cas stares her down. After a long moment her façade crumbles and she bites her lip.

"Just bring him home," she orders, her voice strong despite the tears choking it. Cas nods once and heads over to the Impala. He'd gotten a ride to the airport from Dean this morning, so he'd had to take a taxi here. His own car is still at Dean's house, which means he's stuck driving Dean's monstrous baby.

It feels like trespassing, somehow.

He starts the Impala's engine, listening to that familiar hoarse roar, and wraps his hands around the wheel. Something by Led Zeppelin- possibly; Cas isn't familiar with Dean's favorite bands, which Dean considers to be mildly sacrilegious- starts playing and Cas turns it down until it's a whisper lost under the engine's constant muttering.

Michael will know where Dean is, or will know who has him. He won't be at the office, not today, not with the whole thing with Nick. So Cas points himself towards Michael's house instead, fully intending to get an answer out of his brother even if he has to shoot him.

* * *

The Impala is perfect for Cas' mood- big and dark and loud and rude, edging other cars out of the way on the road, the drivers giving him a wide berth. It feels like a weapon, something big and powerful purring away at his fingertips, eagerly awaiting his next command.

Michael lives in a secured, closed-gate community, but Cas knows the code to get in. He pulls up the long drive of Michael's house and swings the car around, blocking the entire drive. It's almost midnight but the house- mansion, really- is brightly lit. There are a dozen people on the lower floor, darting around like frantic butterflies and whispering and generally being useless. He has nothing to say to them and they avoid him, so it's just as well.

Michael he finds in his office, standing at the window and drinking something from a large crystal decanter. The TV is on but muted, the picture that of a local reporter speaking earnestly at the viewers.

"The story broke at ten," Michael says, as if Cas _cares._ "The reporters think I'm at my office. The joys of living in a gated community."

"You knew this would happen. You have a fallback plan," Cas says, not bothering to care about his brother's plight. This is a mess of his own making.

"I have three," Michael corrects mildly. He moves away from the window in order to refill his glass. "What about you?"

"Me?" Cas echoes, caught off-guard. Michael sends him a pitying look.

"Scandals have this unfortunate way of affecting everyone, Castiel," his brother tells him calmly. "And you're right at the center of this one. Your job position is a little less dependent upon public opinion than mine, but not by much."

"You think I care about my job right now?" Cas demands. He moves over to Michael, slaps his hand away when he reaches for the decanter again. His brother goes very, very still, lifting cold brown eyes to meet his gaze.

Just hours ago Castiel stared down the devil. This man is an entirely different breed of monster.

"The only real option you have, if you insist on carrying on with this police thing," Michael says, reaching around him to pick up the decanter, "is to move to another city, preferably a large one, and let the sheer numbers just swallow you up. Anonymity is your only hope."

"I'm not moving," Cas says. Michael smiles blandly at him, an adult humoring a child's stubborn, unrealistic declaration, and moves back to the window.

"Good luck with that," he says pleasantly. "I myself have a new job lined up in Europe. Somewhere… exclusive. Far away from our brother's meddling ways."

"This isn't about you," Cas growls. Michael scoffs.

"It's always been about me," he says. "Him and me, only. There is no one else."

In that moment, despite everything, Cas feels an overwhelming wave of sorrow and pity for his brother. Nick had destroyed Michael a long time ago and neither of them could see it. They were too busy fighting over the expensive houses and cars and imported clothes and alcohols and the high-brow jobs to realize Michael is as empty inside as his twin.

"Where is Dean?" he asks. Michael glances at him, brow furrowing.

"I don't know," he says simply. "Is he missing?"

"Yes. You didn't have something to do with it?"

"Why would I care?" Michael counters. "He means less than nothing to me."

"He means something to me," Cas says softly. His brother smiles, something as cold and dark and hungry and glittery-sharp as what Nick had given him only hours ago.

"Then I suggest you go look for him," Michael tells him helpfully.

He doesn't know he's moving until he's already done it, coming back to find his hand stinging and bleeding, the skin over his knuckles split with the force of his rage, and Michael on the floor looking stunned. He turns his head to the side and spits out a mouthful of blood and looks back up at Cas, a calculating dark look. He had not known his little brother had found something worth fighting for.

"There is someone on your staff who has been in direct communication with Nick," Cas says, forcing himself to stay calm, as if the punch hadn't happened. "Who is it?"

"I've no idea what you mean, Castiel," Michael says calmly. "If someone were speaking to a serial killer and I was aware of it, rest assured I would put an end to it very quickly."

"It doesn't matter anymore, it's all over. You might as well tell me."

"No," Michael snaps. He rises to his feet in one smooth move, trying to lord over Cas as he always did when they were younger, but they're the same height now, have been for years, even if Cas is only just now realizing it. "No, Castiel, it does matter. You can accuse me of being a murderer's brother, it's true enough and there's nothing I can do about that. But now you are suggesting I was aiding and abetting that murderer."

"I don't care about that," Cas snaps. "It won't leave this room. I just need to know who it is, because they most likely have Dean."

Michael stares at him as though Cas has started speaking Mandarin.

"The reporters will figure it out soon enough," he says. "Once they remember you, they will be hounding your every step. If you want to find Dean, you had best get moving."

Cas goes. The Impala's back bumper leaves a nice big scrape down the side of one of the fancy imports parked along the drive as he's turning the massive beast of a car around, setting off the import's alarm. Cas makes a mental note to cover the cost of repairs for the Impala- if there is any- as he pulls onto the road.

* * *

He's on his way to City Hall- lacking any better options- when he finds Sam. Actually, he almost runs into Sam, managing to avoid it only by almost literally standing on the brakes and probably leaving half the car's tires burned onto the road. Sam looks surprised to see the Impala, but only briefly; then he shifts into angry, furious. Cas spares a moment to think about how truly intimidating the man looks before Sam comes striding over and sieves into the car and freezes when he realizes who's driving. Then the thunder and lightning fade away, leaving only a scared young man.

"Oh, thank god," he says. "I should've realized when you stopped for me, but-"

"Sam, _Sam_," Cas cuts in, using his best _calming the witness_ voice. "Where is Dean?"

"Westmore, house two-two-seven-five, and he's- he's hurt pretty bad, Cas," Sam says, naming a pricey new housing development outside of the city lines. Cas does a u-turn, going up over the curb and over someone's lawn, and floors it, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he does so. He calls the police switchboard direct, giving what little information he has and requesting- in a very strongly worded sort of way- an ambulance sent out as soon as possible. He doesn't slow down- the neighborhood is pretty far out in the middle of nowhere, and unless they've got someone already in the area for some reason, he'll get there first.

"When did you get back?" Sam demands once he hangs up.

"About an hour ago," he says. "Jess called me. What happened?"

"There was a woman there, and she kept talking about Nick. She's some kind of serial killer groupie or something."

This surprises Cas less than it probably should. He focuses on the road and waits for Sam to continue.

"She had a knife, and she was cutting him up. She was going to kill him," he says, sounding very much like a scared little boy. "And I started getting mad, and the lights were flickering, and I- I-"

"Attacked her?" Cas asks. He remembers pain, the agony of teeth tearing into his neck. His tone is even but his hands curl tight around the steering wheel until his knuckles are white. His hand stings, the broken skin from the punch pulled apart again by the tension.

"Yeah," Sam says. "Cas, I'm sorry," he adds, as if he has anything at all to be sorry for. Cas can't look at him, can't stand to see his familiar friendly face and remember Anna's fanged snarl, and anger and shame curl through his gut.

"No," he says stubbornly. No. Sam is his friend, and he will not let his own ghosts destroy him again. "You have nothing to be sorry for." He looks over, meets Sam's gaze for a moment, then returns his eyes to the road. Such a small thing, to feel so monumental.

"Anyway," Sam continues after a moment, "she was pretty dazed, but she managed to run out. I stayed with Dean, but I couldn't do anything. I couldn't help him."

Cas glances at him again, sees the helpless rage on his face, and wordlessly presses even harder on the gas pedal, letting the big car give all she has.

* * *

The house is a show house, big and gaudy and empty and with no neighbors for miles. Cas parks the Impala half on the lawn, mindful of the room the ambulance will need. Sam is out of the car before it's stopped moving and coming back out of the house by the time Cas has made it to the front porch.

"No one but Dean," he reports, but doesn't seem to mind when Cas slides his gun out of its holster all the same.

He finds Dean in the kitchen, tied to a chair, head down and blood still sluggishly dripping onto the tile floor, and his heart lurches painfully. He holsters his gun again and strides over to Dean, shaking hands pressed against his chest, two fingers on his pulse point. Cas only starts breathing again after he finds the heartbeat- weak, but steady.

"He's alive," he says, aware of Sam waiting concernedly nearby. As he shifts, he hears something grinding under his foot. Broken glass. The windows have been blown out, he sees as he looks around. The air is hot and thick, the house's AC system not having been turned on due to its lack of inhabitants. Cas turns back and traces his thumb over Dean's forehead, frowning in concern when he feels no sweat. Dehydration, probably- he's been here, presumably with no water, for six hours at least. It certainly doesn't help that Dean's idea of drinking more fluids in summer is downing coffee and whiskey in equal proportion.

Cas cuts the rope with a kitchen knife and presses a dish towel against the worst of the bleeding, a deep stab wound in Dean's left side. Dean's eyes flutter and he moans, but he remains unconscious, even as Cas gently pulls him out of the chair and lays him on the floor.

"How is he?" Sam demands. He's hovering over Cas, staying back just far enough that Cas doesn't keep seeing him out of the corner of his eye. Cas checks Dean over, short and professional just as every police recruit is taught. Most of the injuries are shallow, designed to hurt more than bleed, the only potentially serious one the stab in his side. Far more concerning is the dehydration.

But Dean is young and healthy, not old and weak. Six hours in the summer heat won't kill him, although they will have to discuss his drinking tendencies when he's feeling better.

"He'll live," Cas says, feeling the relief rush through him as he says it. Sam sighs and sags in relief, buries his face in his hands and gives a slightly hysterical laugh.

"You know," he says, "this used to all just be about saving people. I could tell when they were gonna die, and Dean stopped them from dying. That was it."

"And then I came along," Cas finishes softly. "I'm sorry."

"Are you?" Sam asks, oddly. "If you could, would you change any of it?"

"Yes," Cas replies instantly. "I would. One thing. I would have talked to you sooner."

Sam smiles. "Neither would I," he says, and it's amazing how much that means to Cas.

The sirens in the background are getting progressively louder, and Cas can see through the window the beginnings of flashes of light. Sam ducks out and reappears a moment later.

"You're going to have to explain all this," he says, gesturing to indicate everything.

"I'll think of something," Cas says serenely as tires screech out in the driveway. A moment later the EMTs are rushing in, and Cas yields to them, backing off as they descend on Dean.

They make room for him in the ambulance without needing to ask.

* * *

Waking up in the hospital is an indicator of either the best weekend of all time or a weekend gone very, very wrong. Dean tries to shift and decides it's the latter- he can feel the stitches pulling in his skin, which is weird and kinda creepy.

"Sammy?" he asks, voice dry and rough. Something moves in the corner of his vision and a moment later his moose of a brother leans over him.

"Hey," he says on a laugh, relief written broad over his face. Dean grins in answer. "How're you feeling?"

"High," Dean answers honestly. "The hell've they got me on?"

"Pretty much everything," Sam answers. He smiles at Dean fondly. "Your boyfriend's pretty badass, you know."

"Cas?" Dean tries to sit up but fails; his arms feel like jelly. "Cas's here?"

Sam steps aside and Dean can see him now, sleeping scrunched up in a ball in one of those evil hospital chairs. He doesn't look badass. He looks like a candidate for serious muscle cramps the first time he tries to move.

"Yeah, he's awesome," Dean says with a sloppy grin. "For a guy who drinks tea."

Sam barks a laugh. He shakes his head and glances over at Cas, then looks back at Dean and smiles again. Dean watches this with a vague sort of concern.

"What's wrong?" he asks finally.

"Nothing. I mean, there're a few things, but no one's dead, so…" He shrugs.

"Few things like what?" Dean insists. Sam sighs.

"Well, his one brother is a sociopathic serial killer, his other brother is disgraced and is going to have to step down, and his boyfriend is a semi-alcoholic who's going to have to give up drinking if he wants Cas to stick around," this last part is said with a pointed glare, and Dean wants to squirm, because as much as Cas has never said anything about his drinking habits, he still knows Cas disapproves of how much he drinks. "Also, Cas had to make up a very complicated story that explains everything and is pretty much complete bullshit, but like I said, nobody's dead."

"Dude, really?" Dean squints at him. "How long have I been out?"

Sam grins and ducks his head and sits down on the corner of Dean's bed and starts at the beginning.

* * *

She's calling herself Meg, today. She might keep this one; she likes the sound of it.

She's picking the lock on a Ford Taurus when the FBI issue sedan pulls up behind her. The driver's door opens to reveal a handsome blond man in a suit, minus tie. In the passenger seat, Meg can see, is the body of their former FBI friend, naked except for the tie knotted loosely around his neck.

"I didn't kill Winchester," she says instantly, trying not to make it a whine. He looks at her.

"I know," he says. "It's for the best. Castiel came to talk to me, and he didn't have to do that. He deserves something for that."

"How was it?" she asks as the lock pops and the door opens. He leaves the sedan, tossing his prison-issue jumpsuit back into the car as he goes, and circles around to her.

"It was tolerable," he says with a shrug. He claims shotgun without a word, leaning the seat back and closing his eyes as she gets to work hotwiring the car.

"So what now?" she asks as the engine finally catches and turns over.

"For now, we lay low," the devil says. "Let the uproar die down. Then, we'll see."

She smiles and blushes and looks away, feeling like a schoolgirl with a crush and really not caring, and puts the car in drive and pulls onto the road. Long way to go before we sleep, and all that.

* * *

The second time he wakes up, Cas is still there, and this time Sam is not. Cas is still sitting in his chair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at his interlaced fingers.

"Nick escaped," Cas reports, not looking at Dean. "They found Agent Harding's body in his car in Dayton."

"Shit," Dean says, and thinks, Dayton. Halfway between Baltimore and Kansas City.

"Michael is gone," Cas continues. "He took a flight out this morning. And my captain has asked me to take paid vacation. He doesn't know what to do with me."

Dean doesn't know how he's supposed to respond to this, so he doesn't. He simply watches as Cas lists their failures.

"I might have to move back to Chicago," Cas says, and Dean feels something cold slide down his chest and spread through his stomach. "If I want to keep my job, or any job."

"They know you here, Cas," Dean protests. "No one cares about Nick or Michael or any of that crap."

"Ten months, Dean," Cas counters, finally looking up and meeting Dean's gaze. "Ten months, I've lived here. Most of the department doesn't remember my name. They still have me on a rotation basis with temporary partners. They didn't want me here to begin with."

Dean swallows his outrage. It's true, he remembers- back at the beginning of all of this, one of the first things Sam had said about Cas was that a lot of people thought he'd bought his way into his position by virtue of being the mayor's brother. The reality is somewhat different, Dean knows now- Cas had come to Kansas City because the city had a detective position open; the Michael thing had been a coincidence. But most people don't have a first-hand understanding of the Milton family dynamics.

"Feels like it's been longer," he says. "Does it have to be Chicago? If you're starting over, why not start somewhere new? We could go to Texas. I like Corpus Christi." He takes a moment to daydream, smiling to himself. Now that would be _awesome._

There's a long, awkward silence. Then Cas shifts and says, voice verging on hopeful, "You would go with me?"

"Um. Yeah. Sure." Dean shrugs, trying to communicate that it's no big deal. "I mean, your job is an actual job, it's a career, you're invested and all that, and my job… is a hobby. That pays." He shrugs again.

The silence lasts a lot longer this time, and about halfway through Dean finally, _finally_, realizes what he's saying. It's too late to take any of it back, though, so he swallows the panic and forces himself to stay calm and keep his stupid, runaway mouth shut so he doesn't completely ruin everything.

"I can't ask you to leave your home," Cas says finally. Dean snorts, operating now on sheer, blind terror.

"You aren't asking," he points out. "I'm offering." And he snaps his mouth shut before he says anything else, because this is uncharted territory, here. A casual one night stand? Easy. A week or two of marathon sex? Love it. Telling the guy who's unofficially moved in with him that he'll move to Texas with him? This general stage in relationships is one Dean has never reached before, has always avoided like the plague. Hell, he's only hit the moving-in thing once before, and that lasted all of four days.

"A week ago you weren't speaking to me," Cas points out reasonably. Dean shrugs.

"I'm over it," he says evenly, like that's all there is to it. He listens as Cas gets up and moves over to him.

"No more secrets," Cas says quietly, and when Dean looks over, he takes a deep breath and says in a rush, as if worried his nerve will fail him, "I think I love you."

For a moment Dean's swamped by the heady rush of euphoria and panic mixed. A part of him wants to start running and never stop, but a much larger part of him wants to pull Cas down and kiss him. So he does, because Cas is close enough to reach, kisses him until the awkward angle starts to pull at his stitches.

"Yeah, I-" he says. "I know. Me too."

Cas gives him a fond look, clearly knowing that's the closest he's going to get. "I don't want to move to Texas," he says.

"You sure? Corpus Christi, man…" Dean trails off hopefully, but Cas just looks at him. He sighs. "You don't wanna move, don't move. Simple as that."

Cas considers this for a moment, then smiles softly. He goes back to his chair and drags it over to the bed and sits down. Dean waits and watches, but Cas hesitates, then carefully fold his hands together in his lap. When he realizes this is the most he's getting, Dean snorts in irritation, then reaches over and grabs Cas' wrist, pulling on it until Cas twists his hand around and tangles their fingers together. The skin over his knuckles is split and bruised- he punched someone hard enough to do some serious damage, Dean realizes, and thinks he knows who that someone is. He wishes he could have been there. Hell, he would've _paid_ to have been there.

He traces his thumb, feather-light, over the broken skin and looks away. He can't quite look at Cas, knows he's blushing a little bit- and it's pathetic, that he'll move to Texas with this guy but starts blushing like a friggin' _girl_ at the thought of holding hands- but figuring he can blame this uncharacteristic loviness on the drugs, if someone calls him out on it. He shifts around a little, trying to find a comfortable position, and drifts off to the sound of Cas' even breathing and the echo of the taste of tea.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: The final bit. I think I'm actually going to miss this monster baby of mine.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Consider this a late present.

* * *

Christmas in Kansas City is not exactly the Hallmark ideal. It only snows just enough to cover everything with a nice layer of misery, grey slush caking car tires and hiding, but not actually covering, the patches of ice that make sidewalks and porch steps literal murder. Dean's gone sliding through two red lights so far- the unfortunate thing about the Impala in winter is her sheer _weight_; if she hits a patch of ice, she's not stopping until she hits something, damn what Dean has to say about it. The sun hasn't come out in days, the sky covered with a continual thick grey blanket of low-hanging clouds. The seizure-inducing blinking lights and the canned music and the Santas at the malls and on street corners are doing a fine job of slowly driving everyone mad. Dean kind of passively-aggressively hates the Christmas season, when he isn't aggressively-aggressively hating it, and if _one more person_ calls him a Scrooge…

There are good things about it, though. Even Dean has to admit the Christmas lights and decorations on the houses are pretty cool, all lit up at night, at least when they aren't gaudy and overdone and a serious fire hazard. And getting presents is awesome, of course, because Dean is still a child inside and giving is nice but _getting_ is so much better. Also, Christmas is the time of year where everyone forgets about crap like calories and trans fats and eats whatever the hell they want.

He's in the back, hunched protectively over a plate of Ellen's orgasmically good cookies that he has to defend with his life because he is surrounded by cookie thieves, when Jess sticks her head in to tell him Cas is here.

He grabs the plate and comes out front.

Cas looks worn, as he always does these days- he's breaking in a new partner, some blond British nut who is pretty much Cas' polar opposite- but he lights up when he sees Dean. He circles around the counter as Dean's putting the cookie plate down and hooks an arm around Dean's waist and pulls him into a peppermint-flavored kiss.

Someone in the corner of the shop starts whispering, no doubt asking if that isn't that one serial killer's little brother. Cas still gets grief over that, but he ignores it for the most part, and what he can't ignore, he shuts down with one long stare. Mostly people just accepted it and moved on. Michael had bowed out and was long gone but Cas had stood his ground and weathered the storm, and even if it never really goes away, at least it's no longer a big thing. Cas doesn't take anyone's crap and doesn't let anyone's opinion of him bother him and doesn't notice the whispers that follow in his wake, and his captain, as it turned out, was willing to go to bat for him once it became obvious that Cas wasn't running away.

It's still rough, in some ways, and probably always will be- cops are paranoid and superstitious in their own weird ways, and Cas pings all their radars in all the wrong ways now. But all the same, the same thing that drove Michael away is what protects Cas- people think better of him for staying than they would for his leaving. Kansas City is the only city in the country that has a serial killer's brother on the force and they take a sort of perverse pride in it.

"You kill Balthazar yet?" Dean asks, offering up one precious cookie. Cas takes it and braves Dean's wrath to snatch another.

"Not yet," he says evenly. "I kind of like him, in a way. He reminds me of you sometimes."

"Okay, _ow_," Dean grumbles. Cas ignores him and takes a bite of his cookie.

"That's sweet," Jess says. Behind her Sam- or Cousin Itt; it's getting hard to tell these days- starts gagging like a five-year-old. Dean makes a mental note to call up Pam and ask if there are any young non-psycho female ghosts hanging around, and if any sort of ghostly hooking up is possible. The very idea of ghost sex is scarring on so many levels, but Dean is an awesome big brother, and unfortunately offering romantic assistance to helpless hairy moose- mooses? meese?- is an awesome big brother's responsibility.

"I need a ride home," Cas says. "Balthazar borrowed my car."

"He finally figured out convertibles aren't good for winter, huh?" Dean asks smugly. "And Mustangs are shit at handling snow."

"If you start talking about how your car is superior to all others, you will sleep on the couch tonight," Cas informs him bluntly, not even bothering to look up at him. Jess sniggers as Dean snaps his mouth shut. Cas isn't joking about that, just as he wasn't joking when he said he'd arrest Dean if there was ever call to. That had been simultaneously one of the hottest and most embarrassing moments of Dean's life.

"I've got it handled here, if you want to go," Jess says, smiling knowingly at them. Cas finishes off his second cookie and leans on Dean, gently pushing him away from the plate, and makes a sneaky ninja-esque move for a third. Dean lets him have it, because he's warm and comfortable, all pressed up against Dean like that.

"I think I'll stay here," Sam offers, clever boy, probably knowing where this will be heading once they make it home.

Dean leaves half the cookies for Jess and shepherds Cas outside. As always, Cas seems utterly indifferent to the cold, which Dean will never understand and will always think is massively unfair. Once they're at the Impala Cas stops and turns and kisses Dean again, a real kiss this time, the kind that takes a moment to recover from once it's over. Dean licks his lips, chasing the peppermint flavor.

"Peppermint tea?" he asks. Cas produces a large baggie full of tea leaves.

"Secret Santa," he says, enunciating carefully, like he's never heard these words before and he wants to make sure he gets the pronunciation just right. He'll always have that, Dean thinks, that streak of alien weirdness in him. "Jo drew my name."

"Huh," Dean says, like he hadn't spent two hours down in the station, hunting people down and making damn well sure the person who got Cas in that exchange knew him as something other than the devil's little brother. He'd paid some rookie beat cop fifty bucks to switch with Jo, who had declared him 'adorable'.

He'd given Jo the tea, too, so really he'd done all the work there, but it was worth it in the end.

"Freakin' herbivore," Dean grumbles. "Put that down before someone accuses you of using pot."

Cas gives Dean a dark look- the tea thing will always be a thing between them, but it's all Cas' fault anyway because he's the guy who drinks tea and decided to go out with the local coffee shop owner- and Dean wraps a hand around Cas' and slides it into his pocket. He keeps his hand there for a minute or two, his fingers like ice and Cas' hand nice and warm, and slides the other up under Cas' coat.

It's not perfect. Dean's brother is still dead and stuck in limbo, and Cas' brother is still the one who put him there. Cas' whole family is still a disaster zone, and now the whole world knows it. People still stare and whisper and point at both of them because now they're both officially the town weirdos. Jess got drunk at the Christmas party last week and informed Dean very solemnly that she thinks Cas' new partner is kind of hot, and ever since both Sam and Cas have been looking at her like she'd sprouted a second head. Cas still drinks tea and watches history programs with Sam and works unpredictable hours and he still says _I love you_ to Dean in a soft, almost timid voice, like he really thinks Dean's answer is ever going to change.

"Get in the car and turn on the heat if you're cold," Cas tells him pragmatically, gently pushing his hands away. Which really just sucks all the fun out of winter and being cold, but Dean's pretty used to Cas being a total joykill.

Dean gets into the car and starts the engine and fiddles with the vents as Cas gets in. Then he reaches over and hauls Cas over, halfway onto his lap, earning a startled grunt. He wraps his hand around the back of Cas' neck and kisses him, focusing only on the way he shifts in Dean's lap, trying to find a more secure position. Then Cas' elbow hits the steering wheel just right and the horn blares, and a moment later Sam is there bitching.

"For Christ's sake- go home! You can wait that long, can't you? God, I thought the honeymoon phase was supposed to be over by now."

"We're going," Dean yells as Cas slides back to his side of the bench seat. Dean glances over at him. "My brother's a whiny bitch, did I mention that?" he asks conversationally.

"You have, yes," Cas says, and Dean can see it now, that glint in his eye. He's got the driest delivery of all time, but he does indeed have a sense of humor in there somewhere. He doesn't mention his own brothers, any one of which would easily trump Sam in the horrible sibling category, kindly allowing Dean his moment.

They're halfway out of the parking lot when Sam comes galloping back out of the shop, face pale and eyes wide and hair flying. He skids to a stop and starts waving to them, gesturing towards a man heading to a gold SUV with dramatic, sweeping arm gestures, like some sort of spastic air traffic controller.

In a rare moment of stubborn immaturity, Cas sinks low in the seat and folds his arms over his chest. "He's your brother," he says petulantly.

"You've got the badge," Dean counters, and Cas growls- actually, literally growls, and Dean will never not think that's the hottest thing he's ever heard- and jerks the door open. He leaves it open on purpose, because a tired and sexually frustrated Cas is cranky and definitely not above such petty retributions. Dean has to slide over to the passenger's side to get it- thank god for bench seats. Then he pulls back into his parking space as Cas pulls out his badge and talks to the man.

"Sorry," Sam says as Dean gets out of the car.

The unfortunate thing about winter is there's about a million more ways to die than any other time of the year, especially accidental deaths, and Sam is useless at predicting the method of death. If this is something accident-based, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they will never know. They'll be here for hours, if Cas can keep the guy here that long.

Dean still remembers when saving someone's life was a thrill, not just so much work. Then again, back then he had about as much to live for as Sam did.

"Yeah, you owe us," he says, and goes instead to start brewing some tea, because Cas is definitely gonna need it.

* * *

Three hours after their first attempt to leave the shop, they finally make it home. Cas, wild romantic that he is, is almost asleep by then. Dean can't blame him- he's been working his ass off these past five months, trying to erase the stain of his family by proving his own worth. Dean hates that it's necessary, and occasionally reminds him that Texas is still an option. It isn't, not really- Cas has been through too much crap to back down now- but he's enough of a jerk to find it amusing how Cas gets all sniffy and disdainful because Sam explained to him the only reason Dean suggested Corpus Christi in the first place is for the beach and the local nightlife.

Dean steers Cas inside, still mostly asleep and pliant and trusting in Dean's guidance. He collapses across the couch and smiles sleepily up at Dean, who goes to get a blanket from the bedroom.

On the dresser is a postcard from Vancouver. It's addressed to their house but names Sam as the recipient; there's no writing on it other than that, but of the select handful of people who know about Sam, they could think of only one who would send a ghost a postcard. It's kind of intimidating, that a serial killer knows their address and feels comfortable sending them stuff, but Dean gets the feeling there's nowhere they can go to give him the slip, and running will only encourage him to chase them. Neither Cas nor Sam need Nick in their lives, ever again, and Dean certainly has no desire to run into Nick's pretty little friend anytime soon.

They haven't told the cops. They'd have to explain the whole Sam thing if they did. So long as it's only postcards, a petty harmless amusement to keep a sociopathic killer busy, there's no need. It's not like anyone's going to catch him.

He leaves the postcard on the dresser- he'll burn it later, just to be safe- and drags the blanket off the bed and heads back out into the living room where Cas, inhuman freak that he is, is asleep on the couch and apparently not bothered in the slightest by the fact that it's about four degrees above freezing in the room.

Dean pushes and shoves his way onto the couch, because sleeping Cas has no manners and trying to be polite with him will only end in bruises and someone sleeping on the floor, squirming about until he's partially beside and mostly under Cas, the blanket on top of them. Cas mumbles sleepily against Dean's throat and nuzzles his neck. Dean buries his face in Cas' perpetually messy hair and breathes in deep. A year ago, he wouldn't have thought, wouldn't have dared to hope, that he could have this.

"Night, Cas," he says, even though he fully intends to be up again within an hour, to get something to eat if nothing else.

"G'night, Dean. Love you." Cas mutters back, and Dean doesn't try to stop his stupid grin at that. He whisper _love you too _and shifts once more, until he's perfectly comfortable, and closes his eyes and lets himself drift off to sleep.


End file.
